


Veriform's 'Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace'

by MazeltovCocktail



Series: Veriform's 'Star Wars' [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 23:15:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 50,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7594198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MazeltovCocktail/pseuds/MazeltovCocktail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Qui-Gon has always known that the Force can speak, that its voice, just past the edge of hearing, murmurs in a sacred language the deepest secrets of reality. Now, in the midst of a trade dispute threatening to flower into war, he may have found someone who can hear those mysteries, a conduit of the Living Force more powerful than any in living memory. Can he solve the riddle that is Anakin Skywalker before chaos engulfs the Republic?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Negotiations

A LONG TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY…

THE PHANTOM MENACE

The ancient Galactic Republic teeters on the brink of schism. The Senate is divided and plagued by corruption. The worlds of the Outer Rim, the Republic's farthest reaches, protest the growing power and authority of the Jedi Order as the Galaxy slips into an economic depression. Galactic industry suffers under the brutal taxes necessary to maintain the flagging Republic.

Angered by a Jedi ruling against their claim of transport fees unpaid by the government of the planet Naboo, the Trade Federation has blockaded the world and is demanding restitution from the Senate. The Senators from the Rim Worlds, championed by Count Dooku of Serenno, have aligned themselves firmly with the Trade Federation and the Senate has degenerated into vicious debate. Desperate to keep the fragile peace intact as elections loom, Supreme Chancellor Valorum has dispatched Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi as ambassadors from the Republic to the Trade Federation. But there are darker forces at work than greed and injustice; the Sith walk in the shadows and, unbeknownst to the Jedi, the Republic teeters on the brink of total collapse...

CHAPTER ONE: NEGOTIATIONS

QUI-GON

The Neimoidians watched them pass, gaunt green figures robed in black and arrayed in parallel lines to greet the Republic's ambassadors. Qui-Gon Jinn waded through their fear as he crossed the cavernous docking bay, the frigate they'd arrived on at his back and his padawan Obi-Wan at his side. The whole ship felt wrong to him, the recycled air sour and knotted with apprehension. Too many battle droids in the ceremonial guard arrayed in beige platoons behind the welcoming committee. He could feel their ocular slits tracking him, could feel the guttering candles of their rudimentary presences in the Force. Even such crude creations carried within them the spark of being, but their presence disquieted him. This deck was only one of many; had the Federation bought itself an army to lend teeth to its merchant fleet? _We're too late to stop what's coming,_ Qui-Gon thought.  _Perhaps it was inevitable from the beginning._

He felt Obi-Wan's unease like an itch at the back of his neck, but the young man, square-jawed and serious in his roughspun tunic and brown robe, hid it well. _He will be ready for the Trials, soon,_ Qui-Gon realized. The thought saddened him, though there was joy in it as well. He would miss Obi-Wan's steadfastness and his practicality, qualities he himself was sorely lacking. A disciple of the Living Force, Qui-Gon followed the dictates of the moment where his instincts led him, trying in his own small way to heed the vast and wordless voice that bound and joined all life. Now it spoke to him of Obi-Wan's strength, and of an auspicious future, one of moment and of wisdom.  _H_ _e's been ready for some time now,_ Qui-Gon thought ruefully. _Old fool. Let him go and be his own man._  They were nearing the end of their welcome delegation's serried press. Behind them, blocks of battle droids were already wheeling in lockstep to redeploy to other sectors of the mighty battleship while crew filtered away in muttering knots, the pall of their agitation still palpable.

In the archway leading from the bay into the central passageway of the great  _lucrehulk_ -class battleship's broken torus stood a shining silver protocol droid. "Viceroy Gunray sends his apologies, Master Jedi," it trilled in its melodious voice as they approached. It seemed almost comically small in the center of the soaring archway, the torus's curving spinal passage opening up long and bright and vacant behind its polished silhouette like the throat of some leviathan. "He has been detained by pressing business on the bridge. He asks that you excuse him and accept refreshment in the Chamber of Accord until he can conclude these urgent matters and devote his full attention to the talks at hand."

"Thank you," Qui-Gon said, offering a shallow bow. "We accept the Viceroy's hospitality with gratitude and extend to him the warm regards of the Republic. Please, lead on."

"Right this way, Master Jedi," chimed the droid. It turned and toddled off into the vasty passageway.

Qui-Gon slowed his pace a moment glanced at his apprentice. Obi-Wan's brow was furrowed. His hand hovered near the hilt of his lightsaber, concealed beneath his robes. "Stay close," said Qui-Gon. "Something is amiss." 

"I sense it too," said Obi-Wan. 

They carried on in silence, the Federation battleship a tomb around them. Every pressure door was sealed, every waypoint and security station running on automatic settings or else crewed solely by droid labor. The bare decor and dispiriting grey and brown bulkheads gave the corridor an air of grandeur squandered by clerkdom's bent for uniformity. Qui-Gon looked back only once, compelled by some ineffable feeling in his gut. Their ship, its red bulk perched on stumpy landing legs, looked frail against the blackness of the void. 

* * *

 

The Room of Accord was just one coil of intestine, Qui-Gon knew, in the labyrinthine digestive tract of the Trade Federation's negotiation process. It was an impressive coil, though, with its ten-meter table and high-backed repulsor chairs starkly framed against a floor-to-ceiling viewport. Naboo turned in the darkness beyond the plasteel screen, a marble mottled in blues and greens with white whorls of cloud and ice caps at its poles. Qui-Gon, his hand pressed against the port, could feel the chill of every centimeter of emptiness separating him from the planet. Life sang on Naboo. Its fecund swamps, its airy cities. The deepest abysses of its oceans held a myriad of beings irreplaceable and conscious. Qui-Gon felt the same whenever he saw any world from space, his comprehension beggared by the thought of so many lives unfolding, beginning, and ending in the compass of his vision.  _If we fail,_ he thought,  _war will poison this place forever._

Neither Jedi had touched the tray of drinks and artfully-presented tidbits presented for their easement. The droid had led them to the room, delivered again the Viceroy's most abject and sincere apologies, and vanished back into the guts of the battleship proper, the teeth of the chamber's ornate blast door scissoring shut behind it. The thought that any repast delivered by the hands of Gunray's minions might be laced with dinko venom had passed between them unspoken.  _I would have shot us down while we docked,_ Qui-Gon mused.  _Perhaps the Viceroy is indecisive. Plagued by the multitude of ways he might dispose of his Jedi problem._

"I don't believe the Viceroy means to join us," said Obi-Wan. The younger Jedi fairly vibrated with tension. All the books on rhetoric that he'd consumed, the elocution drills he'd practiced day and night in his cabin on the frigate; he would have made a fine diplomat, given the chance. 

The hiss and thump of the door's magnetic locks engaging drew Qui-Gon's attention from the distant pulse of Naboo's life force. "Ah," he said. "It seems you were right, Obi-Wan." Desolation gripped his stomach as soon as he'd spoken, cold claws digging deep. On the far side of the table, Obi-Wan paled and stumbled, catching himself on a repulsor chair which swayed beneath his weight. 

"Master, what's happened? I feel...I feel--"

"They've destroyed the ship," said Qui-Gon, grief for the men and women he'd only just begun to know hollowing his voice. "The pilot, the crew. Our escort. They've become one with the Force." Which was to say they had been flung into a raging torrent, their uniqueness never to be seen again, their souls subsumed into the light that journeyed between stars. Beautiful. Terrible. Qui-Gon gave himself to that same flow as the sound of many battle droids approaching reached his ears, muffled by the blast doors. "Prepare yourself, Obi-Wan. We'll need to fight our way free." He drew his lightsaber, holding the well-worn hilt loosely by his side. Obi-Wan collected himself and did the same. Together, the two men moved toward the blast door as the clank of magnapeds on decking grew louder.  _There must be dozens of them._

Just then, hidden valves squealed somewhere in the walls. Billowing clouds of yellow-green gas began to pour from vents concealed beneath the ornamental trim that ran along the floor, swamping the room in moments, coiling around the two Jedi's legs, and filling the air with an acrid smell. Qui-Gon shut his eyes and drew a deep, burning breath while some purity remained in the recycled atmosphere. At his side, Obi-Wan did the same, and then the tide engulfed them and their world was swirling poison.

 

NUTE

Nute Gunray wrung his long-fingered hands and tried not to sweat, though he knew the effort was a futile one. His skin was already slick with oily perspiration beneath his heavy robes of office and tall black miter. "The Jedi ambassadors have arrived, my lord," he stammered.

The hologram of the cowled man who called himself Sidious stared at him, face lost in shadow. "And they will be dealt with." It was not a question.

"Even as we speak," said Nute in his most placating manner, unable to keep a sort of hunching bow from bending his shoulders.

Rune Haako, Nute's lieutenant and chief settlement officer, folded his arms and made a disapproving _humm-_ ing sound deep in his wattled throat. Sidious ignored the other Neimoidian. "You are to commence landing your troops. Seize the capital, and make certain that the Queen and the junior planetary senator are detained," he said, gesturing vaguely toward Nute with a wrinkled hand. "My apprentice, Darth Maul, will arrive shortly to ensure your safety."

Nute's lipless mouth worked. "Of-of course, Lord Sidious," he gasped. "At once."

The hologram flickered and vanished, plunging the room into darkness. Nute composed himself and turned to the frowning Haako. The Viceroy adopted his most convincing look of disdainful confidence. "The situation," he said, pushing aside his wriggling doubts and fears, "has been dealt with."

"Jedi do not die easily," said Haako.

Nute sneered, though privately he was inclined to agree.

The two Neimoidians left the gloom of the privacy chamber, walking out onto the cathedral-sized bridge of the _Saak'ak_ , flagship of the Trade Federation fleet. Battle droids and Neimoidian technicians manned the various stations on the bridge's concentric tiers, centered on the Captain's command dais where Daulty Dofine stood listening to an OOM command droid's flat, toneless report. Dofine turned as Nute entered the room, the corners of his mouth drawn down in displeasure. The Viceroy felt his innards squirm.

"The Jedi have left the conference room, Viceroy," said Dofine, his tone morbid.

Haako sat down in a suspensor chair on the topmost tier, near the helmsman's console. "We will not survive this, I think," he said.

Nute trembled, wiping his mottled green hands on his red gown of office. These moments of truth always upset his digestion. How he longed to table accounts, or perhaps to draft a trade agreement, to bicker over rights and shipping routes. Anything but this constant, dreadful panic. But he had not clawed his way to the top of the Trade Federation to be undone by antiquated monks. He drew himself up to his full height. "Dispatch more droids," he said to Dofine, fighting to keep the tremor from his voice. "Recall some droidekas from the landing groups! We must kill those Jedi!"

"Doomed," said Haako, shaking his head.

QUI-GON

 _Gunray must be nervous,_ Qui-Gon thought as the blast doors of the Room of Accord unlocked and slid open. _He wants to see us die. He wants to be sure._  Gas billowed out into the passageway where a score or more of skeletal battle droids awaited in a double firing line, the front rank kneeling, the second erect. They shifted their aim as the gas eddied and blew around them, tricking their photoreceptors and fouling their targeting subroutines. His lungs burning, Qui-Gon crouched just beyond the open doors, concealed by the gas for at least another precious few moments. Enough time to sink deeper into the flow of events, to let the Force be his guide. To give himself to its swift waters. Straightening, he stepped out out of the swirling fog and into the corridor. The droids shifted with much clanking and chittering, their ghoulish faces swiveling toward him along with the barrels of their mass-produced blaster rifles.

"Open fire," said one, pointing with a skeletal finger.

They commenced just as Qui-Gon's lightsaber snarled to life, green light washing the bulkheads and refracting through the dissipating gas. He parried bolts by knowing which would kill and which would maim, which would graze and which would miss, his boots sliding across the deck in the steps of a dance the Force taught him from one moment to the next as droids smoked, sparked, fell, burned. Sometimes his eyes would flicker and drift closed as the Force swelled up within him, then open again as its vast tide ebbed and mortal sensation returned. He wove a tower of light around himself as reinforcements flooded in to swell the withering ranks. Somewhere in the distance he could hear an ominous rattle, the sound of great coins set on their edges and spun. Their window of opportunity was closing. Their chance to warn the people of the Republic of the Federation's duplicity, to say nothing of warning the people of Naboo, would soon be gone. A stray bolt grazed his side. He let the pain flow on into the river of his focus, but he knew he couldn't keep the droids at bay forever.  

Obi-Wan leaped past him, a blur of brown robes and blue light, and slammed feet-first into a droid in the second rank as wild blaster fire ricocheted off of the bulkheads. The Padawan's blade carved through the battle droids with ease as he rolled to his feet, leaving behind glowing wreckage. They crashed to the deck in his wake as he spun onward. The brutalist efficiency of Soresu was a thing of beauty in Obi-Wan's hands, and the stiff-jointed droids stood no chance against him. Qui-Gon closed the gap between himself and his apprentice, moving from Ataru's looping, flowing defense to its wild strikes and lunges. In a matter of moments the two Jedi stood side by side among the remnants of their executioners, a smoking hill of scrap drifted three feet high against the port bulkhead. Qui-Gon deactivated his lightsaber, the blade vanishing with a hiss, and set off down the first corridor he saw, Obi-Wan jogging at his heels. The dropped-coin rattle was growing closer. 

Obi-Wan kept his own weapon lit, heedless of the sparks it struck from the deck and bulkheads. "Master, where are we going?" 

"To a hangar, I hope," Qui-Gon replied, squinting down the dimly-lit passageway. Like all the _Saak'ak'_ scorridors, it curved out of sight as it wore on, following the parabola of the broken torus. "Trust the Force, my young Padawan."

Behind them, the rattling ceased. Qui-Gon turned, reigniting his blade. Twenty meters distant at the entrance to their passageway were a pair of sleek, deadly war droids ensconced within the shimmering bubbles of protective shields. They unfolded like ruinous flowers from their transit mode, a wheel-like formation Qui-Gon guessed relied on micro-repulsors and low-friction plating to speed their progress through the battleship's cavernous guts. Heavy blasters on their arms, rangefinders and spectrometers gleaming on their small, flat heads while filigreed backplates dumped waste heat and insectile limbs scored the decking. They clattered forward, their deployed gait slow and graceful.

"Behind me," Qui-Gon said, and then the corridor was a killing field. The war droids' repeating blasters flooded the air with light. Qui-Gon's blade could hardly part the wave. His forearms blistered with the searing heat of the droids' near-misses as he edged back along the narrow passageway. the bulkheads around him blackening rapidly, sparks pluming where his lightsaber scored their panels. The Force suffused him and guided his blade, sheltering Obi-Wan from the onslaught, but there was no respite to be had, and sooner or later, Qui-Gon's body would fail. They might try retreat, but against such fierce fire there was little chance that they'd survive. Qui-Gon spoke as though from the bottom of a well, the effort of investing conscious thought with speech a taxing one while he held the Force so close. "Find us a way out. The emergency blast doors--"  

"Ahead of you, Master." Obi-Wan turned and plunged his lightsaber through the nearest bulkhead, molten slag running like honey where the blue blade bit into the durasteel and its coatings of sealant. A circle of dull red bloomed around the point of impact as the metal softened and Obi-Wan's weapon sank deeper. When it found the insulation, sparks plumed into the corridor. Obi-Wan did not recoil. Grimly, the young Jedi leaned against his blade until, with a muffled  _whump_ of ignition, the insulation layer behind the bulkhead caught fire. Alarms bleated, the noise so overwhelming that Qui-Gon's rhythm nearly faltered. A blaster bolt grazed the back of his hand as he moved through his forms, leaving a shiny weal of burned skin in its wake. And then, just as he realized he was at the end of his strength, the two-ton emergency fire doors slammed into place to their either side, sealing them into their section of hall as the alarms screeched and howled. The din of the war droids' blaster fire was instantly muffled. Then it ceased.

Obi-Wan slumped against the bulkhead opposite the one he'd ruined. "I think that concludes negotiations," he chuckled.

"Well done, my padawan." Qui-Gon extinguished his lightsaber and put a hand on the younger man's shoulder, disguising his own exhaustion with a warm smile. Nearby, the melted section of wall emitted a thin tongue of white-hot flame slowly burning up toward the deck above. "What next?"

Obi-Wan smiled. He gestured, reaching out with the Force, and a nearby vent cover shook itself loose of its housing and clattered to the deck. "Follow me, Master." 

* * *

 

The ship's airways took them down into the bowels of the _Saak'ak._ Through echoing filtration caverns and down tubes so tight they had to wriggle on their bellies to progress, the two Jedi wormed their way deeper and deeper into the battleship as the sound of the deck fire alarms faded behind them. Down through cavernous maintenance tunnels and stinking solid waste reprocessing plants where vats of unnameable biomass bubbled and degraded into a kind of nutrient paste. The last of these was inactive, its vats rusted through, and interloping greenery, its seeds or spores blown down the vents, bloomed amid the decay. Great ferns uncoiled at Qui'Gon's touch, their leaves heavy with moisture. Creepers had colonized one of the bulkheads entirely, prizing open its joins and weak points, feasting on its constituent minerals. Yellow flowers on slender stems bloomed amid lacy leaves, and Qui-Gon smiled to see a pair of colorful neekoflights, escapees from some Neimoidian officer's gilded cage, or perhaps the descendants of those brave jailbreakers, nesting among the coils of the hanging vines. Even in a place like the _Saak'ak,_ bludgeon of a cabal of grasping, greedy tyrants, life bloomed.

They passed through the verdure of the defunct processing station without speaking. Qui-Gon could feel Obi-Wan's impatience, but the boy needed to learn that life was finite, and beauty fleeting. The clash and clank of machinery in motion drew them onward down a narrow maintenance shaft left uncovered by some careless mechanic. It terminated in open air, and the two Jedi knelt and peered over the edge. A mosaic of droids unfolded in the yawning hangar bay below, an ever-shifting pattern of war whose branching fractals surged in columns toward a staggered double line of cumbersome MTT transports, swaybacked repulsorcraft ten meters high at their peaks and armored like bank vaults with slabs of rust-red durasteel infused with bronzium and klectite. They had their storage racks extended. Each one would ferry hundreds of the Federation's artificial soldiers into battle, and each one boasted fearsome dual-linked laser batteries that could pound and rend the enemy ranks while the battle droids crept closer to mop up. Behind the MTTs loomed six H-wing landing craft. Titanic atmospheric transports, the H-wings could swallow dozens of their smaller cousins in close company with spider droids, battle tanks, and other weapons of destruction without compromising the lift of their gargantuan repulsors. They were the arks that would bridge the divide between the _Saak_ _'ak_ and the surface of Naboo. The planet loomed behind them through the flickering magnetic containment field that warded the bay.   

"An invasion," said Obi-Wan as a heavy lifter carrying a clutch of wheel-form war droids rumbled past their hiding place. "We have to warn the Council."

"The transports are our only chance," said Qui-Gon. "Follow my lead, Obi-Wan."

The younger man made to protest, but Qui-Gon wasn't listening. The Force opened its arms to him as he launched himself free of the maintenance gangway and plummeted toward the deck below, robes billowing around him, to land lightly between towering stacks of cargo containers. Even as Obi-Wan dropped down beside him, a lumbering load lifter snatched away the nearest container in its massive mag-clamps. Qui-Gon read the moment's flow, watching calmly as their cover rose up into the air above them. And then he walked out onto the open deck, threading a needle between the swaying eyes of security holo-cams and the tens of thousands of droids marching in lockstep legions across the deck. There were always spaces between. Always grey paths to walk unseen in the void between perception and ignorance. Hard to find the balance, harder to keep it, but the Force guided his footsteps as surely as it had guided his blade in the passageway, and Obi-Wan kept close to him. Vulture droids cruised overhead, their repulsors rattling the housings of their lesser kindred as the battle droids processed toward the open transports and their extended storage racks, mighty boughs awaiting foliage. Once positioned, they stored their blasters on magnetic locks affixed to their backplates and then knelt, compressing themselves into neat little packages which the racks' servo arms snatched up and hung. The racks withdrew. The MTTs' bulkheads hissed shut. Other transports descended from above on shuddering repulsors as the first ranks glided toward the H-wings.

Qui-Gon's steps quickened. He was overextending himself, drawing too deeply on the Force after his exertions against the war droids, and the path before him seemed to flicker and change as his focus lost its edge.  _A moment more,_ he thought, Obi-Wan's terror at their exposure and trust in his master a warring storm front just behind him. They inched forward across the vast and churning deck, the Federation's war machine thundering around them. Qui-Gon spread his hands like a man on a tightrope. He felt a vein jumping in his forehead as he led his apprentice onward through the cathedral of machinery. The two Jedi ended their long walk behind an idling grav tank, a sleek, ochre-hulled engine of death with a flaring cowl in which missile tubes gaped like eyes. Qui-Gon crouched, sweat dripping from his nose and soaking the collar of his tunic. At his side, Obi-Wan's face was pale, his knuckles white on his lightsaber's hilt. One last stretch of deck remained before them, and beyond it loomed an H-wing, its gargantuan landing leg split in two to admit its cargo up its grav ramps.  _That's it,_ Qui-Gon thought.  _We get aboard it, or we die._

"Stay near the crew," he whispered to the younger man. "The droids will travel without atmosphere; the navigators have to breathe."

Obi-Wan nodded, and together they broke cover and sprinted for the darkness of the great ship's gaping maw.

 

NUTE

"The Jedi have entered the vents," said the OOM droid, delivering the cataclysmic news in the same tone it used when traffic delayed a shuttle landing on Corsucant.

"Then sweep the vents," cried Nute, clutching at his vestments. His voice was cracked. His lungs were seizing up, in need of the calming release of a spice capsule. There would be time for that later, though, once the situation was resolved. It would not do to incapacitate himself when Sidious might contact him at any moment.

"Yes, Viceroy," the droid acknowledged. It fell silent for a long moment, contacting its subordinates over the ship's network. Lights flickered rapidly behind its eye slits.

Nute drew himself up, struck by a terrible thought and attempting to avoid the appearance of blind panic. The Jedi, if they really had gone into the vents, could be anywhere inside the _Saak'ak._ They might be privy to all her secrets, to her every corridor and chamber. Even his own private quarters could no longer be counted on as safe. And if the droids did not apprehend the Jedi soon, they would come for him no matter where he went or how thoroughly he defended himself. His lipless mouth twitched. "Prepare my shuttle," he said in a strangled voice that did not seem anything like his own. "Captain Dofine, you have the command."

Dofine nodded and sank back into his half-spherical command seat, long green fingers tented beneath his weak chin. Nute gestured peremptorily to Haako and his adviser rose from his own seat, shaking his head as he did. They left the bridge in the company of a score of security droids. "This glorious retreat, at least, is sensible," hissed Haako to Nute. "Murdering Jedi during a negotiation session, destroying a Republic ship. Pfah, Sidious and his machinations will be the end of the Federation." The elder Neimoidian spat on the deck.

Nute felt a flicker of nervous fear at his old colleague's warning, but he had only to conjure up the image of the money Sidious represented. The impossible, incomprehensible money. And the prospects Sidious promised were richer even than all the credits in the coffers of the Banking Clan, richer than exclusive trade routes to the Core Worlds. Nute rubbed his sweating hands together. Independence. Autonomy. Words to frighten the Republic, to bring the teetering edifice of Galactic Government and its Jedi watchdogs to their knees.

The two Neimoidians approached their shuttle as the first landers left the _Saak'ak'_ s portside hangar. Nute watched from the boarding ramp as a pair of the great H-wing landing craft slid out through the shimmering magnetic containment field and into the void between the blockade fleet and Naboo's atmosphere. The planet was clearly visible through the field, filling the entirety of Nute's vision with mottled green and blue. He blinked, eyelids nictating over his sensitive eyes. To his every side great marching blocks of battle droids readied themselves for transport even as more landers rose from the deck and departed for the planet's surface. Rune was clever, and he was experienced. But he was not a visionary. He would never have been able to see what Nute saw in Sidious, to see the opportunity the Sith Lord represented.

Nute sighed. The airlock hissed shut behind him as he took his seat opposite Haako, accepting a glass of thick yellow juma juice from a serving droid. Its smooth, sour taste soothed his stomach as the shuttle rose on a column of flame and left the hold to join the invasion fleet. Anything, he reflected, tapping a finger against the brim of his glass, to avoid the Jedi.

Haako, his own glass half-empty before the serving droid had even left the room, made a sour face at Naboo as it grew in the viewscreen. "This is folly," he said.

"This is the future," said Nute. He felt suddenly nauseous.


	2. The Tower

CHAPTER TWO: THE TOWER

PADME

Senator Padmé Naberrie stared at the flickering image hovering just above the holo-transmitter in the audience hall of Theed's royal palace. Buttery light interrupted by the procession of columned arcades spilled over the ancient marble floor. A flock of twirrls flew by and their shadows skittered with them. Their passage left only the murmur of ornamental fountains and the distant rumble of the falls to distract Padmé from her mounting frustration. She fought the urge to stamp her foot and scream. "Surely," she bit out through clenched teeth, "there must be something you can do?"

Palpatine, her senior partner in Naboo's delegation to the Republic Senate, passed a hand over his unshaven jaw. He was a distinguished-looking man of perhaps fifty with a long, thin nose and pale blue eyes. "I have brought three motions before the full senate, and two to committee," he said wearily. "All five are pending further consideration, tabled in favor of the Chancellor's tax reforms and the grievances of the industrial seats. I am doing all that I can, Senator Naberrie. Have your discussions with the Viceroy yielded any fruit?"

"None," said Padmé, trying to keep the bitterness to a minimum. The ornate, vaulted emptiness of the audience hall sent her failure echoing out with excellent acoustics. "He refuses to consider partial remuneration, even with Master Gallia's ruling demanding a total clearance of debt. The Chancellor's tax reforms--"

"Have caused no end of grief," snapped Palpatine, his eyes suddenly hard. "If Viceroy Gunray and the Federation are willing to blockade Naboo over this, how many others among the industrialists do you think will follow their example? The Banking Clan, the Techno Union, Geonosis. Valorum attempted to walk a fine line, and his stumbles are costing the Republic dearly. Dooku gains fresh support for his pro-corporate motions with each passing day."

Padmé sighed. "I'm sorry, Sheev," she said to the older man. "The blockade is wearing nerves raw here, and I suppose I'm no exception. I haven't slept in days..."

Palpatine looked concerned. "There is no need for an apology," he said in that comforting yet authoritative voice he had, the voice that had carried so many motions through the Senate by force of oratory and charisma alone, that had won him four consecutive terms despite his humble birth. "I ask only that you remember that we occupy the same corner of the proverbial shock-boxer's pit."

"Thank you, Senator," said Padmé, a tired smile curving her lips. It vanished in short order. "Another point. The Jedi that Master Yoda assured me were en route have not arrived."

Palpatine's expression flickered, became one of incredulity. "They haven't?" His voice crackled with static. "Senator, that is most unsettling. I will inform the Jedi Council at once. You may rest assured that--"

The image vanished, replaced by diffuse lighting and the oceanic hiss of static. Padmé stared at the empty holo-transmitter, her ears ringing. Somewhere, she heard a klaxon's scream just as the audience hall's towering bronzium double doors burst open and Planetary Governor Sio Bibble swept into the room with a pair of rattled-looking Royal Guards in tow. Bibble was an aging man, though still vigorous, with a pointed white goatee and a look of extreme discomfiture on his lined face. His embroidered blue doublet was stained with what looked like soup, his thick head of white hair in disarray. "Communications have gone down throughout Theed, Senator," he said stiffly. "We are cut off." His voice trembled. "Troops are landing outside the city."

A chill ran down Padmé's spine. "I was sure the blockade was a bluff."

Bibble mopped at his glistening brow with a pocket square. "Evidently not," he said. "They have begun their invasion. The Queen is in hysterics. She refuses to leave the palace. She refuses to consider surrender."

Padmé's mouth went dry. "Does she intend to fight?"

Bibble snorted. "She is addressing the Palace Guard as we speak."

The rumble of massive turbines churning air drifted in through the audience chamber's open windows. Padmé could see dark specks floating through the air beyond the limits of the city of Theed, angling down toward the rolling emerald hills around the capital. The idea of Theed's volunteer civil order battalions holding the city against a droid army was absurd. They would be ground into paste in an hour. Surely the Queen, idealistic as she was, could see that. Then again, the Queen was twenty-two, beloved, and beautiful. She saw what she wanted to see.

"How long until they take the city?"

In answer, Bibble pointed to the distant landers. Swarms of smaller dots were detaching from the enormous ships and streaking toward the city. Droid starfighters, engines screaming in the warm summer air of high noon. Padmé's hand rose to her mouth. "Oh," she said.

QYMAEN

A thousand, thousand repulsor pods freighted with as many planetary delegations rose in imitation of the galaxy's spiral arms from the distant floor of the Senate Rotunda. Droids equipped with holo-cams darted among the nobility and politicians of the Republic like insects over a battlefield. Shafts of golden light let in by innumerable windows crisscrossed the vast expanse's upper reaches. And near the apex of the dome with its triumphant frescoes, Qymaen jai Sheelal gripped the railing of Serenno's senate pod with clawed hands, seething as he forced himself to listen to the Chancellor's blather about peace, equity and respect. Valorum had a coward's voice, a liar's manner. He spoke of peace while Kalee lay in ruins and the Huk feasted on her bones. He spoke of law while the Jedi dispensed judgment from on high, daring to usurp the place of the ancestor gods and levy _justice_ against Kalee and her warriors. He spoke of respect while the Republic signed trade agreements with the filthy insect Huk and stuffed their pockets with Huk credits, while Qymaen's wives rotted in their graves.

"...must endeavor to avoid the needless struggle of war, to preserve the values of the Republic that has steered the Galaxy time and time again toward peace and prosperity..."

Qymaen sneered behind his mask. "How much longer will he rant?" he rasped, turning to the tall, silver-haired man at his side.

Dooku, Count of Serenno, gave an eloquent shrug. "Impossible to say." The Count's voice was rich and deep, grave with long experience. He had been a Jedi, once. Now he was Qymaen's greatest hope for Kalee, and for his people.

"Tarkin will want a rebuttal," said Dooku, his attention shifting to a gaunt, almost skeletal man standing, a look of distaste on his severe features, in the Eriadu Senate pod. "Patience, General. We will not win our cause in the space of a day, not while the gears of the Republic still grind."

On the Chancellor's Podium, suspended thirty meters above the Senate Floor, Valorum was working to his lackluster climax. He was a lean man, his grey hair cropped close to the aristocratic lines of his skull. "The blockade of Naboo is in direct violation of litigation supported by this government," he said firmly, to lukewarm applause and scattered jeers.

 _By the Jedi, you mean!_ shouted a senator from one of the lower pods.

A low rumble of support from the Rimward delegations rose behind the declaration. Qymaen could feel their antipathy, their growing unhappiness. Always those who rose high without the blessings of the gods were cast down, and Coruscant, with its glittering towers, was no exception. The Jedi did not deserve their seats of power. They were a self-serving cabal, a cancer on the body of the Galaxy. Accursed of the gods of Kalee. Qymaen still recalled the austere presence of the two Masters in the war room on Kalee, humans in long brown robes and humble tunics. And yet for all the humility of their dress they had pronounced with the authority of holy men, had stripped all rights from the Kaleesh and branded them war criminals.

"The Republic will not tolerate tactics of intimidation," said Valorum.

There was a loud chime as one of the senate pods signaled for recognition. The Trade Federation, represented by a tall Neimoidian in a black miter and ceremonial robes. Qymaen's lips peeled back from his teeth in disdain.

"The Chair recognizes Senator Lott Dod of the Trade Federation," roared Valorum's chamberlain, the blue-skinned Chagrian Mas Amedda, from his place beside the Chancellor.

Murmurs spread throughout the Rotunda as the senator's pod floated out from the wall and toward the podium. Dod himself appeared immune to the low-key uproar. He stood straight, for one of the cringing merchant-worms. The Neimoidian swept the Rotunda with his unpleasant gaze, his expression one of stern consideration. "My fellow senators," he said in that stilted, drawling way the Neimoidians had, "our era is one of prosperity, of peace, of growth and progress. The Republic is strong, and the galaxy flourishes. The hyperspace lanes have made this galaxy powerful, have welded its planets together into an iron alliance." He raised a fist, chin jerking up in righteous conviction. "The galaxy is stronger than it has ever been."

Qymaen knew the Neimoidian was building to a point, but he still felt a flush of half-mad rage at the lies pouring from Dod's lipless mouth. Dooku put a hand on his shoulder. "Patience, my friend," said the Count. Always, the Count urged patience.

Dod was looking around again, a frown growing at the corners of his mouth. He put a hand on the rail of his pod. "With so much of our success owed to the hyperspace routes and to the pioneers who blazed those trails, I am shocked at the lack of gratitude given the Trade Federation! It was our navigators who first mapped the stars! It was our crews that risked themselves in the act of blazing paths between the Core and the Outer Rim!"

"Here, here," said Dooku, and thousands of voices echoed his support. The Count smiled.

"We have shouldered the taxes imposed on our merchant fleets," said Dod, his voice rising steadily in volume. "We have endured the choking regulations of committee after committee, and for our loyalty we are denied even our most basic rights as a licensed and represented corporation! This ruling against Naboo's debts to our Viceregality, made by the Jedi with the support of Chancellor Valorum, is illegal! We will not submit to the baseless authority of the Jedi Council."

A great roar rose from the Senate as Dod let his hands fall to his sides. Senators of every race and creed were on their feet, shouting and shaking their appendages at Dod, Valorum, or one another. Qymaen's blood burned in his veins. He could see the open graves in which he had placed his wives; those whose bodies he had recovered. He could see the faces of the Jedi as they condemned his tribe, his nation, and his people. Amedda was shouting for order. Valorum looked overwhelmed, Dod smug and self-satisfied.

Dooku applauded, leading the bulk of the Outer Rim senators in a round of enthusiastic support for Dod. "This is only the beginning, General," he said over the tumult. "If a merchant's complaints can move them like this, imagine what your story will draw out."

Qymaen gripped the pod's rail, his claws squealing against the polished durasteel. His mouth twitched behind his mask, and he said nothing.

QUI-GON

Qui-Gon and his apprentice slipped from the H-wing's ventilation baffles as it settled to the ground just inside the ruined gates of Theed. The clouds of choking dust thrown up by the great craft's landing gave them ample cover as they left the staging area. The shadows of other landers cruised past, accompanied by the punishing downdraft of titanic repulsors and atmospheric thrusters. MTTs and battle tanks emerged from the lander's bay, the former already disgorging battle droids like some great amphibian coughing up its young. The droids unfolded in midair and struck the ground alert and moving. Blasters coughed and magnapeds tramped the worn stones of Theed's streets. Ochre-hulled battle tanks drifted toward the distant domes and minarets of the Royal Palace, weightless on their suspensor fields for all their armored bulk. Qui-Gon, concealed with Obi-Wan atop a shelled and crumbling stretch of ornamental aqueduct, watched droid war columns marching unopposed toward their objectives as starfighters screamed past overhead or clattered on scissor-like legs over Theed's picturesque rooftops. Resistance was weak and scattered, frightened men with blasters taking potshots at the droid battalions from the windows of their homes. People ran wild in the streets. In the distance, vulture droids swarmed a watchtower manned by Royal Guardsmen. Blaster cannons ripped the spire apart from its crown downward, sending dust and rubble cascading into the street. 

"Come, Obi-Wan," said Qui-Gon, turning away from the sight of the tower's collapse as the last flickers of life within the ruined spire went out. The Jedi abandoned their vantage point, striking out into the city. They stayed low, moving through Theed's tree-lined streets in the shadows of its ancient monuments and palazzos until they gained the relative safety of a shaded, ivy-choked alleyway between two luxurious canal-side residences. Qui-Gon crouched in the shadows by the canal's calm waters, his thoughts spinning. From the outset of his mission he had expected resistance from the Federation. Subterfuge, bureaucratic maneuvering. Never, though, had he dreamed they might attempt assassination. And now this. Where had the Neimoidians found the gall to move in such an obvious breach of galactic law? Something sinister moved behind the Federation's newfound bravery, pulling Gunray's strings. Qui-Gon was sure of it. If only his meditations could probe deeper, read the patterns in the Force with greater skill...

"Master," whispered Obi-Wan, his eyes on the squad of droids breaking the doors and windows of the manse across the canal. They fired their blasters through the gaping holes, tracking targets that the Jedi couldn't see. "We should make for the palace. Finding a ship and getting off-world is our only chance to get a message back to the Council."

"A wise course of action," said Qui-Gon. He stood, still watching the droids pass by in a ceaseless stream of beige, watching the slaughter at the manse unfold. "I suggest we seek another road."

* * *

 

They made their way quickly through the labyrinthine alleyways of Theed, daring open ground only when a canal or a break in the cityscape necessitated it. The city was a work of art, all glittering domes and subdued facades of weathered marble. Trees grew everywhere and lawns were artfully unkempt, alive with flowers. Peko birds flitted between eaves and branches. And in the thoroughfares the droids were rounding up the citizenry and kneeling them in rows. Dead Royal Guards lay here and there, their bodies ignored by the victorious army that marched over their corpses. The crash and rumble of the waterfalls that cascaded down the cliffs upon which the city was built grew louder as the Jedi neared the palace. Droids patrolled every square.

Qui-Gon felt the echoes of more deaths throughout the city, cries in the Force cut off with pitiless suddenness. A bulbous, insectile shuttle roared overhead as he and Obi-Wan passed along an arcaded walkway. "The Viceroy," said Obi-Wan. "What do they hope to gain from this? The Senate won't tolerate a move this blatant."

"I do not believe Naboo to be the Federation's true objective," said Qui-Gon. The palace was close now, men and droids exchanging fire on the steps between ancient columns now scarred by blaster salvos and detonations. Droidekas clattered over the square before the monumental seat of government while the nimbler battle droids trooped up the broad marble steps, heedless of the fire pouring down on them. The Palace Guard, lightly armed and poorly trained, were flagging. Qui-Gon watched in silence from the shadows of the arcade. He could do nothing for the dying men. "Come," he said to Obi-Wan. "We'll circle the square and try the cliffs. There should be an entrance, perhaps a hangar or--"

It struck him then, a wave of hatred that boiled the air and stole the breath from his lungs. He staggered and only just caught himself, fingers ripping through the ivy that coated the alley wall. Obi-Wan seized his arm, asking frantic questions in an undertone, but Qui-Gon's focus was shattered. The hatred swirled and twisted around him, bulling its way through the currents of the Force with vicious, single-minded intensity. Qui-Gon's vision faded for a moment, and then returned. The receding _thump-thump_ of ion engines fading into the distance pounded against his ears. He was on his knees, hands pressed against the cold marble. A shadow moved slowly across the square, following the shuttle toward the Palace. Qui-Gon forced himself to stand, legs shaking, and looked up at the belly of a long, sleek gunship with cowled wings. He'd never seen a ship like it before, with its scarred snout and its bulbous aft engine housing. Like a sword of the antique Sith Alchemists, sleek blade and heavy pommel.

"What is it, Master?" whispered Obi-Wan. "I feel it. A burning, in the Force."

"I don't know," Qui-Gon heard himself say as he left the shelter of the arcade, striding with purpose toward the Palace. _Not here. Not after so long._ "Quickly now."

PADME

The droids marched through the engraved doors of the palace's throne room in perfect formation, their weight cracking tiles placed centuries ago by the founders of Theed. Frescoes of the ancient peace between the Gungans and the human colonists looked down now on the ghoulish legion. Their narrow cranial units looked neither left nor right, but their ocular slits missed nothing. Padmé watched from her place beside the Queen as the droid column split into three separate units and moved to cordon off the room. The Federation's coup had taken little more than an afternoon. Theed was firmly in their grasp, the Palace Guard sacrificed in a pointless gesture of defiance. And now the Queen, dressed in red brocade, her face painted with the black and white ceremonial cosmetics of a sitting monarch, insisted on meeting her supplanters from her throne. Bibble stood beside Padmé at the Queen's left hand, looking old and worried. The Captain of the Guard, Panaka, stood at her right with a scowl on his chiseled face.

Droids moved to flank the open doors, organizing themselves into receiving lines. They formed a corridor leading to the Royal Dais, sunlight filtering through the stained-glass windows behind the throne and onto their skeletal forms. Padmé stiffened, choking down her outrage as Gunray and his entourage entered the throne room. The Neimoidian Viceroy wore his black mantle of office and a tall three-pointed miter along with a red gown of some heavy, richly textures fabric. His mottled green hands were clasped at his waist, his lipless mouth twisted into a smile. The aides in his wake were scarcely less extravagant in their choices of wardrobe.

"Your Majesty," said Gunray as he strode down the aisle between the serried ranks of battle droids. "I hope now you might reconsider your stance on our misunderstanding."

The Queen came to her feet, her mouth twisted in disdain. "There was no misunderstanding, Viceroy," she said in her high, clear voice. "A dispute was entered, arbiters procured, and the matter settled in the eyes of the Republic."

"In the eyes of the Jedi."

The voice was a low, cool rasp. A vibroblade drawn over duracrete. The speaker stepped forward, ignoring the discomfited looks directed at him by the Neimoidians. He was tall, though not unusually so, and dressed all in black. What Padmé could see of his face was covered in alternating red and black tattoos, jagged and skull-like. Even his lips were marked. Gunray, eyeing the robed man, cleared his throat and rubbed his hands together.

Padmé saw sweat on the Viceroy's brow. _This one doesn't answer to him._

"Your stubbornness is...regrettable," said Gunray to the Queen. "I had hoped we might reach some equitable settlement." He shot a nervous sidelong glance at the tattooed man, standing beside him. The man's yellow eyes were trained on the dais, on the Queen's haughty face. Amidala was a famous beauty and a stateswoman of no small talent, but she was cracking beneath the cloaked man's stare. Her painted lower lip trembled. Padmé would have felt sorry for the younger woman, had Amidala not spent the lives of her guards to appear strong for a single pointless moment. Gunray _had_ won, for the present. To act otherwise was futile.

"I do not negotiate with criminals," said Amidala, rallying from her momentary loss of face. "Arrest me, Viceroy. I will rot in prison for a lifetime before I cooperate with you."

"You're passionate," said the tattooed man to Amidala. He reached up and pushed back his cloak, revealing a crownlike array of horns that encircled his bald and equally tattooed scalp. A Zabrak of Iridonia. His cloak slipped from his shoulders and pooled on the polished marble floor. He stepped forward, mounted the dais in three quick strides to stand in front of the Queen. "Admirable."

Padmé fought the urge to scramble away at the Zabrak's approach. The Queen stiffened beside her. "I insist that--"

There was a hum, a crackle, and a flash of red light. The Queen sagged back against her throne, smoke rising from her clothes as the tattooed man hooked a long metal cylinder to his belt and, turning, strode from the dais and out of the hall. Padmé heard herself screaming, but the noise seemed to come from across a great distance. Panaka, shouting curses, had seized the Queen by her shoulders and Amidala's legs had simply...slid free of her torso. They jerked, the heels of her slippers sliding over the marble. Governor Bibble vomited noisily onto the floor.

Most of the Neimoidians watched the tattooed man leave. His stride was easy, a predator's loping prowl. Padmé pressed her hands to her mouth and tried with all her might, with every inch of the composure she had drilled into herself over a decade of political bickering and statecraft, not to curl up on the floor and bawl. She was Naboo's ranking representative now, not the dull-eyed woman with half her body smoking on the dais. Panaka was apoplectic with fury and two battle droids had stepped forward to restrain him. Amidala's legs continued to jerk weakly and Bibble was groaning as he mopped his brow with his embroidered pocket square. Droids with blasters drawn kept them penned on the dais with the corpse.

Gunray looked sick. His neck was swelling and deflating at an alarming rate, and his skin positively shone with perspiration. "Ah...Senator Naberrie," he said, his voice shaking. "I apologize for Lord Maul's...untoward action. I think it prudent that you enter my custody, now." He waved a hand and a detail of battle droids approached, rifles at the ready. An older Neimoidian, slightly hunched and weathered-looking, whispered something to Gunray, who nodded before turning back to Padmé. "Naboo is an asset of the Trade Federation now, Senator. Nevertheless, should you wish to comply with our modest demands, your support would be greatly appreciated."

Padmé said nothing. Her ears were ringing as droids advanced to prod them off of the dais, not bothering to look at Amidala's royal corpse. The droids never looked at the dead; they weren't programmed to waste time on corpses. Padmé strode across the throne room's polished floor, trying not to see the blood that several of the droids had tracked across it, and Bibble came staggering after her, still waxy and flushed. Panaka had to be dragged from the dais by his captors. His curses and threats echoed from the dome of the throne room as the ranks flanking Gunray and his coterie parted to allow the prisoners through. Padmé went mechanically with her escort. The Palace around her felt half-real, a floating world of dreams.

"Senator," Bibble said in a low, insistent voice as they were ushered quietly and in good order from the throne room. "Senator, we must--"

"Not now, Governor," said Padmé distantly. "I'm very busy." She turned as they passed out through the tall, narrow doors that led to the palace's hangar and waste disposal complex. Gunray was moving gingerly up the dais's steps, toward the throne, while aides dragged Amidala's corpse away.

Droids slammed the doors shut.


	3. Into Void

CHAPTER THREE: INTO VOID

QUI-GON

The sounds of battle had ceased when Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan reached the cliff face. The two Jedi stood at the edge of the city for a long moment, watching the great Falls of Theed crash down the cliffside to the glittering lake below. Obi-Wan stalked restlessly along the brink, searching for a route into the Palace. It was only a matter of time before a patrol passed along the narrow walkway or the droid overwatch descended to investigate the two robed humans trespassing at the epicenter of the invasion. Qui-Gon could not bring himself to feel concern for their predicament. The Force still prickled and burned with the residue of the hate he had felt from the unnamed ship's pilot, and he could read no deeper into its secrets. _I can never see quite far enough._

Obi-Wan straightened from his inspection of the cliff's edge. "Handholds, Master," he said, glancing skyward as a droid starfighter, _Vulture_ -class, screamed past overhead. "They look as though they might get us inside."

Qui-Gon joined his apprentice at the lip of the cliff. A series of rough metal rungs had been set into the sheer rock face; they curved gently down and out of sight, angling toward the mouth of the Palace's hangar. Without hesitation he swung himself down and caught the first rung, his soft leather boot seeking out another. The wind whipped at his robes and hair, but the rungs held to the cliff. He looked up at Obi-Wan and arched an eyebrow. "Sturdy enough," he said to the younger man.

The climb was not without incident. Twice they encountered rusted rungs that required bypassing, a desperate stretch for the next in the line as fingers slipped and slid, and then a careful balancing act to reach the safety of solid durasteel. Forty rungs down and to the left the rungs terminated above a narrow lip of stone. A walkway, of sorts. Qui-Gon edged along it while wrathful whispers in the Force tickled at the edges of his conscious mind. Something dark stalked the halls of the Palace, a lean and hungry presence. Bloodthirsty and violent. He swept the sensation from his mind. Only yards away, a vast rectangular opening in the cliff face yawned. The mouth of the palace's hangar bay. A short leap carried him from the end of the ledge to the mouth of the hangar, the polished floor of which protruded from the cliff on repulsor sponsons. Obi-Wan landed lightly at his side and together they moved into the echoing space. Sleek silver-and-yellow N-1 starfighters lined the hangar walls, their cockpits dark and empty. A long, chromium-plated Nubian ship occupied the bulk of the hangar's space. Its hull was smooth and curved, prow pointing toward open air. Its twin engine nacelles had a ready, oversized look about them.

From the shadow of one of the N-1s, Qui-Gon watched as a group of pilots was escorted by a droids squad down the hangar toward a pair of enormous durasteel doors. The air crackled with the low hum of nearby generators. More battle droids were engaged in securing the strarfighters, directed by a Neimoidian technician in long black-and-purple robes.

"I have a bad feeling about this," said Obi-Wan.

"A prudent impulse," said Qui-Gon. "Stay low, and keep your guard up."

They crossed the docking bay in utter silence, robed and hooded to blend in with the shadows. Qui-Gon kept his mind fixed firmly in the now, and his eyes on the droids still busying themselves with securing the bay. It was a simple matter to slip up a ladder to the maze of grated catwalks hanging above the docked ships. The two Jedi left the hangar and prisoners behind, exiting through a narrow door in the bay's west-facing wall. Qui-Gon emerged from a slit in the stonework, stepping out onto an ivy-draped aerial walkway spanning the gap between the hangar and one of the Palace's soaring towers. A broad square lay beneath the Jedi, running from the tower to the bay's main doors. He froze. Three people were being shepherded toward the doors by a dozen battle droids. Two, an old white-haired man in rich clothes and a young woman with dark hair and a shocked expression, came willingly enough. The third, a tall black man in a Guard Captain's leather jerkin and peaked cap, was struggling between a pair of droids who had pinioned his arms to his sides.

"The senator," said Obi-Wan in mild surprise. "That worked out well."

Qui-Gon's looked from the escorting droids to the bay doors. _No time for deliberations._ He snatched his lightsaber from his belt and vaulted over the walkway's marble railing. Angular droid heads rose, followed shortly by blasters. Qui-Gon landed in the center of the square, his lightsaber flashing in a figure-eight as blaster bolts streaked through the air around him. He heard Obi-Wan hit the ground, his own lightsaber snapping to life, and then he was lost in the deep waters of the Force. His advance was swift, a twisting dash through a field of red-hot death that did not touch him. He hacked one droid to pieces with a flurry of quick blows, then pivoted on his heel and stabbed another through its chest plate. The Force surged as Obi-Wan caught three droids with a wave of energy that broke them against the courtyard's ivy-covered wall and left components half-buried in the stonework.

It was over in a matter of seconds. Qui-Gon switched off his lightsaber and inhaled, feeling the sweat on his skin and the ache in his muscles. His burned hand throbbed and pulsed. He was growing old. "Senator Naberrie," he said to the young woman, "My name is Qui-Gon Jinn. I'm here on behalf of the Jedi Council. My negotiations with the Viceroy, as you might surmise, did not go as planned."

"Thank you, Master Qui-Gon," said the senator. She looked frightened, but resolute. Her black dress, loose on her slender frame, made her appear even younger than she was. "The Queen is dead." She said it flatly. "A man killed her."

"There are pilots being held hostage in the hangar bay," said Obi-Wan as he moved to stand beside Qui-Gon. "A ship. If we could bypass the blockade--"

"We don't have time to discuss this," said the Guard Captain. He had retrieved a blaster from one of the droids and was engaged in tearing the droid's mechanical hand from the trigger guard. "Governor Bibble and Senator Naberrie must be protected at all costs. We need to get off-world, and now. How many droids are in there?" He jabbed a gloved finger at the hangar bay doors.

"Fifty," said Obi-Wan. "Perhaps more."

"No, Captain Panaka, I'm afraid I won't be joining you," said Bibble, his voice firm. "I shall remain here, to represent the people." He turned to Padmé and took her hands in his, a look of gravity spreading over his weathered features. "Senator, you _must_ bring our case before the Senate. The elections are near, and with your support and a strong sympathy vote, Palpatine may have a chance at the Chancellorship."

"Sio, no," said Padmé. She looked stricken.

"We have no time!" barked Panaka.

"I must agree," said Qui-Gon firmly. The predator whose presence loomed in his senses was moving nearer. The beast had scented blood. "Senator, if we are to attempt an escape it must be now. I sense a grave disturbance in the Force."

The Senator's slim hand slid from Bibble's. She sketched a quick curtsy. "May the Force be with you, Governor," she said thickly. Her eyes were very red.

"And with you," said Bibble.

QYMAEN

Qymaen poured himself another measure of one of the Count's excellent Endorian vintages. He drank. The liquor soothed his stomach and sank his thoughts in a mire of dull, half-formed sensation. The Count's apartment was situated in the wealthiest district on the vast city-planet that was Coruscant, and the view from the parlor window was spectacular. Even Qymaen, accustomed to the arid splendor of Kalee's vast badlands and the rugged beauty of her mesas, found himself moved by the lights, the towers, the firefly streams of air traffic. The Republic might be rotten and corrupt, but at least their wealthy knew how to surround themselves with beautiful things. Dooku, for instance, collected sculptures. Priceless works of art were displayed tastefully and in moderation throughout the Count's suite of rooms, from the naked Human women poised like dancers to either side of the vast fireplace to the bust of the ill-fated Darth Malak on its pedestal by the door.

"I know the Senate's pace does not please you, General," said Dooku. He had just entered the room, dressed in his usual finery with a half-cape flung elegantly over one shoulder. A bald woman, tall and thin and pale, stalked along at his heels, grey eyes flicking around the room. Asajj Ventress, Dooku's half-tamed kath hound.

"My people cry out for vengeance," slurred Qymaen. He steadied himself against the wall, claws splayed. "My wives, untombed and violated. My children murdered."

"I grieve with you, General," said Dooku. He moved to the window and looked out at the city, leonine head bowed. "It is the fault of the Jedi. They have grown arrogant in their antiquity, no longer content to sit in their tower and meditate, they inflict their _wisdom_ on the Galaxy as the rule of law." His mouth twisted in derision. "The law is no place for a Jedi, and they have forgotten their mercy and restraint."

Qymaen thrust himself away from the wall, drink and rage boiling up in him again. "The grave is the only fit place for _Jedi_ ," he snarled. He lurched toward Dooku, lost his footing and slammed heavily into a table on which rested a miniature rancor carved from bloodwood. Dooku caught the sculpture in midair with a flick of his wrist and guided it back to its table, all without laying a finger on its priceless surface. From his back on the floor, Qymaen fought down the instinctive surge of loathing at the sight of the Force in use. Jedi sorcery, but Dooku was no longer one of the Jedi. He was an ally. An asset. Qymaen got unsteadily to his feet and joined the Count at the window. Ventress stood at the fireplace, staring into the flames.

"You should rest, my friend," said Dooku shortly. "Tomorrow you present your case to the full Senate. I believe I can promise a favorable outcome, but I need you in firm control of your wits." The message was clear in Dooku's steely tone. _Sleep. Be sober tomorrow, or you betray our cause with your weakness._

Qymaen nodded. "When I have regained Kalee," he said, pronouncing each word with painstaking care, "I will make a sacrifice in your name at Shrupak, so that you may go with the gods when your time comes." It was as close as he could force himself to come to thanking the Count for his generosity. To go further would be to admit that he had failed, that his strength at arms had fallen short. He saw again the cracked earth that covered the graves of his wives, of his sister-wife Ronderu who had held his heart until the Huk had broken her at the doors of the temple and dragged her to the sea.

Dooku turned to regard Qymaen, a weary smile twisting the corners of his mouth. "You honor me, General," he said. "I hope that we will make that pilgrimage together." He proffered his hand, and Qymaen took it.

Ventress watched in silence.

PADME

Padmé strode through the hangar bay doors behind the tall, bearded Jedi and his young apprentice. Both men exuded that aura of calm, omniscient awareness that seemed to follow Jedi like a gaseous cloud. Panaka was beside her, stolen blaster at the ready. He was a grim man, one of Naboo's few militarists. It seemed, thought Padmé dryly as she fumbled with her own appropriated blaster, that he'd had a point. The Palace had fallen like overripe fruit from a tree in the royal orchards.  _I'm going to come back and crush them,_ she promised herself, the image of the Queen's severed lower half twitching on the dais bright and horrible in her mind's eye.  _Palpatine's going to be Chancellor, and we're going to crush them._

The Jedi led them across the echoing hangar cavern, so vast that the droid patrols securing it had not yet noticed their intrusion. Ahead, an OOM command droid, identifiable by its yellow pauldrons, turned from its inspection of a clutch of pilots sitting at blasterpoint on the polished stone of the hangar bay floor. A dozen droids turned with it. "Halt," the OOM said flatly, raising a three-fingered hand. "Present identification."

The Jedi activated their lightsabers as one, the _snap-hiss_ echoing throughout the hangar as the blades--green and blue--sprang into existence. There was a moment of hesitation as the OOM droid processed this new development, and then it said simply, "Invalid. Blast them." The droids around it raised their weapons in unison. They opened fire.

Padmé raised her pistol and fired once, twice, three times. A droid toppled, sparks flying from its half-melted chest. The Jedi wove glowing patterns in the air with their lightsabers, deflecting blaster bolts back at the advancing clutch of droids. One of the pilots was down, hit by a ricocheted bolt, and several others had prostrated themselves in an effort to avoid the firefight. Three made a rush for the Queen's Nubian yacht, heads down and legs pumping. Padmé fired again and caught the OOM droid in its arm just as Panaka relieved it off its head with a well-placed shot. Padmé could hear the telltale rattle of approaching droidekas. She'd watched the monstrous war droids mowing down guardsmen in the square outside the palace. Now two rolled into view between the ship and open air, unfurling at speed and unlimbering their blasters. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan moved to ward their party as they drew back toward the Queen's chromium-plated yacht, their lightsabers spinning and flashing with impossible speed and precision to send the flood of the droidekas' fire ricocheting harmlessly off into the darkness of the bay. But they couldn't be everywhere at once. Destroyer-fire caught the pilots as they keyed the yacht's landing ramp, ripping through two of them before the Jedi could redirect the fusillade. The lone survivor, a tall man in a long, battered flight coat, checked himself for injuries with a dazed look on his face, then darted inside the yacht as the ramp came down at last. 

"Now, Senator!" barked Panaka. His hand closed around her arm and she found herself half-dragged across the bay, up the ramp, and into the ship's elegant receiving cabin. The pilot was already gone, vanished into the cockpit. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were retreating slowly from the two destroyers and a growing mob of battle droids spilling in from other quarters of the palace complex, their robes singed and smoking, their faces slick with sweat and streaked with ash. They moved in perfect harmony with one another, lightsabers cutting within inches of their skin to turn their enemies' bolts aside, footwork interlocking in a deadly pattern as droid after droid fell under its own reflected fire or that of the machine beside it. And then, as one, the droids put up their weapons. The hangar bay fell silent except for the rumble of the falls and the rising whine of the yacht's engine as the pilot ran through the ship's pre-flight warmup. Dread squirmed in the pit of Padmé's stomach. The two Jedi stood shaking with adrenaline outside the ship, the bay floor around them scorched and smoking. They stared out across the hangar at their suddenly quiescent foes. 

 _Run,_ thought Padmé.  _Run, damn you. Get out of there._

The blast doors to the palace armory hissed open on the far side of the bay. Within, wreathed in shadows, stood the cloaked and hooded figure of the Zabrak. Somehow the vast emptiness of the entryway in which he stood did not dwarf him; instead it made him seem a giant, his robes of ilk nature with the darkness around him, his face a death mask floating in the gloom. For a moment, it seemed as though the interloper and the Jedi must crash together in merciless battle, that the magnetic force of the tension between them would smash them together until one side broke and rained in fragments from the sky. And then Qui-Gon pushed his young apprentice toward the yacht and both men broke into a sprint, running flat-out for the safety of the ship. The Zabrak flew out of the darkened armory, his robes billowing around him as he ran low and swift, legs eating distance in hungry leaps and bounds. He was horribly hypnotic when in motion, his shifting tattoos giving him the appearance of a dozen men sutured together and glimpsed one fragment at a time. He bared rotten teeth in a feral snarl, power gathering around him almost audibly. 

The Jedi dashed aboard and Padmé slammed the boarding lock with her elbow, sealing the ship and banishing the sight of the onrushing killer. Qui-Gon, whey-faced, sagged against a bulkhead, but Padmé had no time to spare for the man. She fairly ran down the ship's central corridor to where the pilot was feverishly running through his preflight checklist, hands flying over the control panel. From outside came the crackling snarl of a lightsaber's ignition. "Forget it!" shouted Padmé. "Take us out! Now!"

"Yes, ma'am!" he answered through gritted teeth. The ship's engines roared like caged rancors. Padmé nearly fell as the deck pitched beneath her, and then the inertial dampeners hummed to life and for an instant she felt as though she were floating. The hangar walls streaked past outside the cockpit's viewscreen. The royal yacht rose sharply and streaked away from the cliffs, pursued by a swarm of beetle-like droid starfighters already loosing missiles and stitching the air with blaster fire that raked the cliffside behind and below them. Panaka appeared at Padmé's shoulder, Obi-Wan at his side. "Our best chance is a quick dash for open space and a jump to the nearest developed system," said the Captain to the pilot. "Try for the polar caps, they won't have--"

"Don't tell me how to do my damn job!" snapped the pilot, and he threw the ship into a violent roll as Theed receded quickly into the distance. The ship's scanners were screaming with a dozen alerts, missile locks and proximity warnings. The man's brow glistened with sweat. His eyes were narrowed in furious concentration. Padmé stared unblinking out through the viewscreen as first the clouds rushed past, towers of white cirrus thrown into turmoil by the yacht's furious wake, and then the sky began to darken as the atmosphere thinned and the yacht shot free of gravity's grip. Qui-Gon entered the cockpit just as the blockade hove into view, hundreds and hundreds of _lucrehulk-_ class cruisers forming a net of Durasteel hull plating and turbolaser batteries around Naboo. Padmé found it difficult to watch the ships grow steadily, filling the viewscreen with their armored bulk.

"Brace yourselves," said the pilot. Padmé wondered briefly what his name was, and if his voice would be the last she ever heard.

There was a moment of utter silence, save for the thrumming of the ship's engines, and then lances of hard light stabbed down from the orbiting fleet. The yacht juked and spun, following the pilot's deft commands. The blockade grew larger and larger through the ship's viewports. Shield warnings flashed on the instrument panel as heavy lasers pounded at the fleeing yacht, testing its powerful redundant shield systems. Padmé wished madly that the ship had carried any armament, anything to strike back and avoid the terrible helplessness crashing down around her now. An sudden earsplitting chime issued from the control panel as the port-side shields failed entirely, snuffed out by a lucky direct hit. "Sith spit!" swore the pilot. He jabbed frantically at the maintenance button, calling the ship's astromech droids to their stations. "Coupling's come loose," he growled, and then he jerked the yoke to port and the blockade fleet blurred with the speed of their acceleration. The Federation ships began to disgorge vast swarms of starfighters like the hives of some terrible insect preparing to ward off intruders.

Another chime. The forward shields were failing rapidly, hammered down by the constant pounding of near-misses igniting plasma blooms in the planet's paper-thin exosphere. The starfighters had nearly closed to striking distance. Padmé could see the blue-white glow of their ion engines reflected on their brownish hulls. The exterior holo-display beside the pilot's seat showed three squat, barrel-shaped astromechs bent forward over an ugly-looking gap in the yacht's hull's seamless chromium plating. Sparks flew around them. One vanished, vaporized by a near-miss from one of the _lucrehulk_ cruisers. And then another.

The feverish wailing of the ship's alarms went silent.

The third droid straightened, pivoted, extended its central tread and set off in silence for the maintenance tubes it had left the ship by. "It did it," said the pilot, unbelieving. "Well I'll be the King of Corellia." Turbolaser bolts strobed through the dark around them. The shields caught a glancing blow and flickered as the pilot blew between two of the merchant battleships in a dizzying roll, their hulls flashing past in rapid succession, and then hauled back on the hyperdrive lever. The stars stretched, the blockade receding at impossible speed and vanishing in an instant. Padmé realized she had been holding her breath. Beside her, Panaka released his own in a long sigh and slumped into one of the cockpit's seats. The pilot spun in his chair, grinning broadly. "Ric Olie, Senator," he said, extending a hand to Padmé. She shook it, bemused. He grinned more broadly than ever, then spun back and put his feet up on the instrument panel, watching stars go by.

"We should speak, Senator," said Qui-Gon. His tone was grave. He still looked tired and slightly grey in the face. "The man in the hangar. The Zabrak, tattooed."

"The Queen's murderer," said Padmé, her skin crawling. "He carried a lightsaber."

"A Sith?" Obi-Wan's tone betrayed a measure of fear. A loss of composure.

Padmé felt her lips twitch. Sith? In Theed? Impossible. Panaka and Olie both looked disturbed.

Qui-Gon passed a hand over his worn, hawkish face. "Yes," he said at last. "I believe he was."


	4. Absemi

CHAPTER FOUR: ABSEMI

QYMAEN

Valorum's deep voice rang out through the emptiness of the Rotunda's central shaft. "The Chair recognizes the honorable delegates from Serenno and his guest, Qymaen jai Sheelal of Kalee."

Qymaen stepped forward to pod's rail. Dooku's now floated nearest the Chancellor's podium. The Kaleesh warrior wore the heavy grey cloak Ronderu had given him before their campaign in the barrow lands. The Rotunda echoed with the jeers, shouts, and applause of thousands upon thousands of senators. He raised his masked face and met Valorum's eyes. The Supreme Chancellor's expression was drawn. Qymaen knew why. Elections commenced in a mere Standard Week, and the uproar in the Senate was a poor way for Valorum to demonstrate his competence as head of state.

Qymaen cleared his throat with much unnecessary rattling. "I am Qymaen jai Sheelal," he said, turning slowly to take in as much of the Senate as he could. The holonet droids would do the rest, Dooku had assured him. "You know my planet, and my people. You see us in your holocasts, when the news is slow. You saw the ruin of my world, its destruction at the hands of the Huk. Our sacred burial grounds have been defiled, our people enslaved to pay a debt that is not ours to bear! We started no war with the Huk, and yet upon us is heaped the cost of their ambitions! Kalee is made a wasteland for their pride; she is laid low and weak."

Dooku shifted subtly, glancing at Valorum. The Senate was stirring, more and more senators of a thousand races coming to their feet in outrage or scorn. Qymaen leaned forward, hunching slightly as he gripped the pod's railing. "And all our suffering, all the injustices we have endured have come from the hands of the _Jedi."_ His voice was a strangled snarl, his teeth bared in a rictus of hate behind his bone-colored mask.

The Senate was well and truly in an uproar now. An easy hive to stir to anger.

Qymaen drew himself up to his full height, raising a clawed fist. "I was a General in the armies of my people," he roared. "I fought for the gods with honor! When the Jedi ruled against us, branded us as warmongers, we lost  _everything._ I have worked for the Banking Clan, for counters of coins and woman-scribes! My daughters have sold themselves to avoid the debt camps where the strong break rocks, where the weak die!"

The roars of indignation grew louder. Toydaria's delegate was berating the insectoid Huk senators with accusations of brutality, and others were quick to join. Naboo's Senator, Palpatine, was quick to add his voice to the chorus denouncing the Republic's poor conduct. Valorum's shoulders were slumped, the corners of his mouth turned downward in a weary frown. Qymaen glared up at the old Human with narrowed eyes. "I will see you dead," he rasped, too quietly for the holonet droids that buzzed around the rotunda to pick up. Qymaen turned from Valorum's podium, looking to Dooku.

"That should slake the Senate's thirst," said the Count. He looked down to where Malastare's three-eyed Gran delegate was engaged in a vicious shouting match with Bail Organa of Alderaan. Senate pods drifted away from the walls, choking the shaft as Mas Amedda bellowed for order and beat his staff of office against the Chancellor's podium. Dooku turned back to Qymaen, his lips moving to frame a question. A silver sphere thudded into the floor of their pod. Dooku's eyes widened. He moved faster than any man his age should have, hurling himself clear of the pod in an impossible leap as Qymaen, his throat tight with fear, seized the warm, fist-sized sphere and flung it over the rail. The thermal detonator arced out through empty air, flashing in the bright lights of the Rotunda. But too late.

There was light and pain. The world spun, lurching violently. Qymaen knew that he was falling. Wind tore at his skin and the pain grew ten thousandfold. He could not feel his limbs, and he heard nothing but a low, dull ringing in his ears. The walls of the Rotunda flashed past as he tumbled through the air. He struck a pod and tried to scream at the incalculable pain that burned his every nerve to ash, but there was no air left in him. No breath. No life. Hands seized his charred and ruined flesh. He saw Dooku's face, ashen and terrified. The Count was asking something of Qymaen, and he wanted to answer. After all, he thought distantly as the Senate began to fade before his eyes, Dooku was his greatest friend. His strongest ally.

His last great hope.

QUI-GON

"The hyperdrive took a real pounding in the escape," said Olie, indicating the holographic cutaway diagram of the ship's guts that the astromech droid was projecting onto the table in the passenger lounge. "We're sitting in the middle of the Outer Rim, and our options are limited. The cracks in the nacelle linkage are serious. We can't risk a long jump."

"Tattooine is close by," said Qui-Gon to the pilot. "Could we reach it?"

  
"Hard to say," said Olie. He scratched his unshaven jaw. "It wouldn't be much of a risk, but there's no guarantee we could find a replacement engine this far from the Core."

"Tattooine?" inquired Padmé. She was sitting on one of the benches that ran along the lounge's walls, her hands clasped between her knees. Panaka stood beside her.

"It is a world of small consequence," said Qui-Gon. "Mostly controlled by the Hutts. A safe haven for criminals, and well outside the reach of the Trade Federation. I believe that it is our most promising option, Senator."

The astromech droid, an R2 unit distinguished by a scuffed and dirty blue permapaint job applied to its many instrument panels and appendages, turned its single large photoreceptor toward Qui-Gon. It beeped and whistled, managing to sound almost apprehensive.

"Very well, yes," said Padmé. Her voice was distant, her stare glazed. She resumed her contemplation of the deck.

"Master," said Obi-Wan. "Surely we could consider a planet more...reputable than Tatooine? The senator might be at considerable risk if her identity were discovered."

Qui-Gon shook his head. Exhaustion hung heavy from his bones. The Sith Lord's nightmarish face pressed close upon his thoughts. "On Tatooine we can vanish," he said. "We'll land outside of one of the larger cities, conceal the ship, and acquire the part before anyone of significance realizes who we are. Anonymity can be a powerful weapon. And I feel that Tatooine is the correct choice, Obi-Wan. Call it a hunch, but I believe our path runs through it."

"We cannot afford to operate on hunches," said Obi-Wan, still speaking in an undertone. "The senator's testimony could be Naboo's only hope, and there is the matter of...of the Sith."

Qui-Gon frowned. Olie was kneeling beside the R2 unit, muttering to himself as he charted star routes on a holomap projected by the droid. "You'll have to trust me," he said at last. "I understand your concern for the senator, Obi-Wan. Our situation _is_ a dangerous one, and it is imperative that we contact the Council and the Senate as soon as possible, but for now I think it best that we disappear. Can you accept my judgment on the matter?"

"Yes, Master," said Obi-Wan uncomfortably. "Of course. I only meant--"

"Your intentions were honest," said Qui-Gon, offering a tired smile to his padawan. He rose from his seat. "You are always free to speak your mind to me, Obi-Wan. I hope you never doubt my sincerity in that."

Obi-Wan nodded, then turned to watch Olie's work with the holomap. Qui-Gon crossed the lounge and sat down beside the Senator, mirroring her pose. "Try to put Naboo from your mind," he said after a moment. "You do your fellow citizens no great service by brooding over their deaths and your own unavoidable failures. It was the late Queen's decision to offer resistance, just as it was Viceroy Gunray's decision to blockade Naboo and to invade it."

The Senator's painted lips twitched. "I see her whenever I close my eyes," she said, not looking at Qui-Gon. "He cut her in half." She straightened after a long silence, composing herself with a sniff. "How long do you think repairs will take, once we reach Tatooine?"

"A few days at most," said Qui-Gon. He hoped it would take no longer than that. "We should be able to find a hyperdrive in short order. Installing it may prove complicated, but I'm confident that we will return to Coruscant before the week is out."

"In time for Election Day," said the Senator, a faint smile twisting her mouth.

Olie stood and ran a hand through his thinning brown hair. "I'll program the jump, Senator," he said to Padmé. "The ship'll make it. No problem."

The senator nodded distractedly and the pilot, satisfied, ambled from the lounge with the astromech droid rolling after him.

Padmé turned to Qui-Gon. "Can we risk a transmission to Coruscant?" Her voice was strained and terse. "If I can inform Senator Palpatine of my situation I'm sure--"

Qui-Gon shook his head. "I would not advise it, Senator," he said. "Too much of our predicament remains a blank, obscured by hidden motives. Any number of parties may be waiting for us to make just such a mistake." He rose from his seat. "I will be meditating in the cargo hold if you require my presence or my counsel."

He left the passenger lounge and made his way to the back of the ship, past the Royal Stateroom and the Guard Quarters. The cargo hold was large and empty, plated with the same reflective chromium that armored the entire ship. Qui-Gon sank cross-legged onto the deck and let his breathing form a rhythm. He let his perceptions expand, let the Force flow through him. The familiar exercise, one his own Master had insisted that he practice daily, was calming. He felt the pulse of the ship's engines, the lightless vastness of space outside its fragile hull, the hum and murmur of the others' thoughts. The Senator was troubled, weighed down by responsibilities she wore like chains around her neck. Panaka seethed and calculated in equal measure, pacing back and forth in his orderly mind. Olie slept in his seat, dreaming of the stars. Obi-Wan's thoughts were better shielded, murky and indistinct behind the walls of his Academy training. Qui-Gon did not delve with any depth or purpose. To invade another's mind was tantamount to theft. Instead he let himself drift, let the net of his senses disperse until there was nothing but the slow pulse of the Force.

Immeasurable. Unknowable. The undercurrent of the universe. He let it wash over him, let it flood his mind and body. To know its will, to carry out its purpose.

The world was cleansed in the lens of his mind.

Qui-Gon opened his eyes. Obi-Wan sat opposite him with his back against the wall, brow furrowed in concentration. The boy tried so hard to master the tasks Qui-Gon set him. His diligence, his attention to detail and commitment, was his greatest asset. But sometimes he simply missed the point. Qui-Gon stood, refreshed, and left the cargo hold to join Panaka and Olie on the bridge.

The pilot turned from his instruments at Qui-Gon's entrance. "Just in time, Master Jedi," he said, patting the heavy silver hyperspace lever beside the control yoke. "I was about to bring her out, give us some distance from the planet. Just in case.."

"By all means," said Qui-Gon, not looking at the man. The stars that streaked by during hyperspace travel had always held certain a fascination for him. Panaka too appeared interested, though a frown had cut deep lines into his dark skin. The situation troubled him, Qui-Gon knew.

Olie hauled back to the lever. There was a slight lurch as the stars transitioned in the space of an instant from blurred lines to clear points, distinct and cold. A great dun-colored globe filled the forward viewport. "There she is," said Olie. He shrugged out of his coat and slung it over the back of his seat before taking hold of the control yoke. "Scum, vice, and villainy all in one convenient location."

"I will inform the senator of our arrival," said Qui-Gon. "You have my thanks."

He left the cockpit, clarity bleeding away.

NUTE

The city of Theed was dark and silent, stretched out below the Royal Palace like a lake of domes, arches, terraced walkways, and ivy-shrouded arcades. Nute stood at the window of his suite of rooms in the palace's summer wing, watching the spotlights of droid starfighters running overflight sweep the city streets. Patrols of battle droids marched down every main avenue, their schedules randomized to discourage curfew-breakers from making runs for freedom. Containment was paramount. Lord Sidious had emphasized that point numerous times during their last discussion. The missing Jedi were dangerous enough.

"It is a great deal of effort to avoid taxation," said Haako from where he sat leafing through a book beneath an oil painting of one of Naboo's past monarchs, a handsome bearded man in blue robes of a simple cut. "Our benefactor is confident he can sway the Senate to our grievances, and he has assured you that we are at the center of his plans for a new era of law." He looked up from his book and shut it. "It is a great deal of effort to avoid taxation." His dour expression spoke volumes.

Nute's throat swelled, then deflated with a hiss. His water pipe bubbled, nearly ready. "Of course Sidious plays a larger game," he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I do not delude myself, Rune. Our cause is furthered by his machinations. It is as simple as that." He shook back the sleeves of his heavy black robes and took the pipe's mouthpiece from its bracket. Spiced smoke filled his mouth as he inhaled. His lungs relaxed. His mind floated in a sea of calm certainty. "Do you suggest I renege on our bargain with Sidious? I suspect Lord Maul might make some objection. Perhaps by collecting our heads."

Haako shook his head ruefully. "Maul's actions...were unfortunate." He stood, took his book from its table and replaced it on one of the shelves that lined the spacious study's walls.

Nute blew smoke, light pouring through his veins as the spice seeped into his bloodstream _._ He felt an overwhelming sense of clarity. "Harsh measures for harsh times," he said in a distant voice. "The Jedi must know that we possess resolve, that our ambitions will not be thwarted by the judgment of philosophers." He sucked on the water pipe, pulling sweet smoke deep into his lungs. His eyelids fluttered as the world around him swam. He saw credits pouring from the stormy, brown-grey skies of Neimoidia.

"I suggest you avoid Lord Maul while spiced," said Haako. He had removed his ornate adviser's headpiece and was rubbing his bald scalp. "Do not forget, Dofine is scheduled to brief you tomorrow on fleet logistics. We will require supplies if we are to stay in force on Naboo."

"Yes," said Nute as smoke coiled out from his half-open mouth and drifted hazily before his eyes. He could see himself reflected in the window, cheeks gaunt, red eyes sunken in bruised sockets. "Yes, of course."

Haako was silent for a long moment. "I am going to bed," he said at last. "Send a droid if you need me for anything." He put on his headpiece and left, robes hissing over the polished marble floor. A servant droid, one of the C-series models, shut the doors behind him.

Nute set down his pipe. He took a deep breath and held it, savoring the tang of spice at the back of his throat, the glow in his nerves as the substance coursed through him. His senses burned, drifting toward serenity. He closed his eyes and exhaled.

QYMAEN

Qymaen's eyes snapped open. Pain burned in his every nerve. He screamed, but there was no sound save a hoarse croak and a hiss of air. His skin was a caul of agony draped over twisted muscles and shattered bones. The air was cold and harsh against his eyes, the fierce lights unbearable in their intensity. He screamed again, arching what was left of his back against the straps restraining him. This time a raw howl of anguish tore free of his throat and the pain redoubled. Blood dribbled from the corners of his ruined mouth. Tendons stretched in his tattered cheeks as his broken jawbone shifted, clicking. The light burned deep into his eyes. He tried to shield his face, but his arms hung limp and useless at his sides. Light. Pain. The Senate Rotunda burst apart again his mind's eye. He broke and could not feel his legs.

A respirator hissed. He felt oxygen flood his lungs.

A door slammed somewhere nearby. Qymaen wrenched his head toward the sound, gasping as leather straps dug into his ruined skin. Raw nerves screamed until his vision faded, spots of color bursting before his eyes. He whimpered. There was a sharp pressure on his throat, and then a wash of painless numbness. Qymaen sagged, torn muscles twitching. His vision returned to him. He lay on a table in a dim sandstone cavern, windowless and cool. A tall, thin Muun in a long fringed black vest and burgundy robes stood over him, a medical hypo in one of its long-fingered hands. It wore a fascinated look on its doleful face.

"General Sheelal."

Dooku's deep, powerful voice came to Qymaen through the haze of sedation. He rolled his head and saw the Count standing at his bedside. Dooku's hair was disheveled, his beard untrimmed. Qymaen tried to wet his lips and found he had none. Pain seethed and howled behind the wall of soporifics in his veins. "How?" he rasped. His voice dragged at his throat, rough iron drawn over brittle glass. The respirator hissed and _clunk_ -ed.

"An assassination attempt," said Dooku quietly. "Try not to speak, General. The damage to your vocal cords is..." Dooku's eyes flicked past Qymaen to where the Muun stood. "Chairman Hill can apprise you of the...medical details."

Qymaen did not turn. All the strength had gone out of him. His body was ruined, to what extent he could not bring himself to investigate. San Hill, Chairman of the Intergalactic Banking Clan, spared him the pain of his anxieties. The Chairman had a deep, nasal voice. He itemized the ways in which Qymaen had been crippled as a butcher might list cuts and grades of meat. Limbs pulverized, skin flayed, organs ruined. Qymaen's dry eyes burned, but there were no tears. There would be no warrior's death for him, no burial in the shadow of the Absemi Monolith where the gods circled Kalee in their endless dance. He would die the coward's death, screaming in the surgeon's tent while his sons awaited him eternally and Ronderu, his sister-wife, his other self, scorned his memory in paradise.

Hill's voice changed tones. "The Count informs me, General, that you held employment with the Banking Clan, in our security division. Your record is...impeccable."

Qymaen turned his head with an effort of will. The Muun was looking down at him with interest, his dark eyes gleaming in the dimness. Hill knew everything about him. Hill knew his past, the battles he had commanded. He knew with iron certainty that he was being manipulated, that Hill and Dooku wanted something from him.

The Count cleared his throat and spoke. "Your abilities, General, will be in very great demand in the years to come. The attempt on your life, I have reason to believe, was orchestrated by the Jedi. You represent a very great danger to the reputation of the Order. A moment approaches, General, a crucial moment in the history of the Republic. The Jedi cannot be allowed to foist the rule of their law upon this Galaxy any longer."

Qymaen said nothing.

Dooku's voice cut the silence like a knife. "Leave us, Chairman."

"Of course," said Hill, and he slipped around Qymaen's table and out of the room. The thin whiteness of him wavered as an afterimage in Qymaen's failing vision.

Dooku's boots clicked against the stone floor as he paced back and forth, a habit he sometimes succumbed to. "I am offering you, my friend, more than a simple position of power. I know you are not a common thug, not a footpad to be handed a knife and turned loose. I am offering you a chance at revenge. For your planet, for your people, for your family, and for the body your enemies have robbed you of."

Qymaen's eyes burned. His vision swam. He could not bring himself to face the Count, to show his unmasked face.

Dooku's footsteps halted a bare meter from Qymaen's table. "I grieve for your loss, General," he said. His voice was low and intense. It conjured up dark thoughts. Thoughts of blood and smoke. "The Jedi have taken everything from you. The Republic has crushed your homeworld beneath its callous heel. You are a broken man, deprived even of the death your people so covet.

"I can offer you a second chance."

Qymaen ran his tongue over broken teeth, the twisted wreckage of his lower jaw working as his muscles clenched involuntarily. "Yes," he rasped. He closed his eyes and felt the Count's smile. Machinery hummed and clicked around his table, sustaining his wretched life.

"Good," said Dooku.


	5. The Sandstorm

CHAPTER FIVE: THE SANDSTORM 

PADME

Tatooine's twin suns beat down on the desert canyon where Ric Olie had landed the Queen's yacht. The dunes shimmered with reflected heat as noon shuffled past at a beggar's pace, leeching every drop of moisture from the air. Padmé's tongue felt swollen in her mouth. Sweat ran down the back of her neck and soaked her tunic; the fabric stuck like glue to her skin. Qui-Gon _had_ , she reflected, advised against her joining the expedition to Mos Espa. Still, sand in her teeth was a small price to pay to get away from the stifling corridors of the Queen's ship. There were too many unpleasant thoughts walking with her there, too many things as yet unaddressed.

Mos Espa appeared gradually, emerging from the heat haze like a scab on the planet's dusty skin. The outer limits of the city were so windswept and colorless that distinguishing them from the desert itself was difficult. The smell rolling off of Mos Espa, however, was unmistakable. The stench of warm sewage was among the less offensive odors. Padmé wrinkled her nose. A freighter rumbled by overhead, circling down toward the sandstone dome of the city docks. Cupolas, minarets and fortress-like walls separated the center of the city from the sprawling mud-brick slums. Speeders buzzed through the air and down the streets like enormous insects.

"There you have it," said Qui-Gon to Panaka. "Mos Espa, Tatooine's port of call for the Galaxy's criminal element." He looked strange in the loose leggings and poncho he'd taken from the ship's extensive wardrobe, less like a Jedi and more like a weathered farmer. It suited his prominent nose, his strong features. He was a handsome man, despite his age.

Panaka glowered. "It isn't safe, Senator," he said for the dozenth time. "I can't advise going down there, not even in disguise." His gloved hand lingered near his blaster rifle.

The R2 unit beeped, its domed head swiveling between Panaka and Qui-Gon.

"Your concerns are noted, Captain," said Padmé, "but we're wasting time. Master Jedi, where do you suggest we begin our search?"

Qui-Gon looked down at the sprawling city. Strains of raucous music drifted out from it on the dry, hot wind. "There," he said, pointing. "Outside the docking bays. There will be junk shops, merchants willing to haggle. We should be able to find what we're looking for."

"Very well," said Panaka stiffly. "Lead on, Jedi."

Mos Espa smelled even worse at a lesser remove. Padmé had to fight to keep from gagging as she passed vendors selling blasters, knives, desert attire, and skewers of unidentifiable meat. Everywhere the dregs of a hundred Systems fought, haggled, swore, and drank in the filthy streets. Panaka was tense, eyes roving between the multitude of alien faces. Qui-Gon seemed entirely at his ease. He hummed to himself as they walked down the thoroughfare, glancing around in mild fascination at the flow and crush of the city. Padmé felt unnerved by his calm, intimidated by the dizzying variety of languages beating at her ears. Her own experience with linguistics was limited to negotiations with Naboo's native Gungans, and their ambassadors spoke enough Basic to make themselves understood. This was insanity. Her head ached. The sunlight cut like knives.

A sharp, furious bark drew Padmé's attention back into focus. She turned toward the sound, tensed to produce the blaster pistol hidden in her sleeve. Panaka was on his back in the dust opposite a snarling male Dug dressed in battered flying leathers. The Dug was spitting curses and snapping his teeth as he pointed with a prehensile toe at a skewer of half-cooked meat lying in the dust. "Hei chatta," he hissed, gripping Panaka's collar in one foot. He stood half the Captain's height, but his body was corded with lean, powerful muscles.

"Easy, friend," said Qui-Gon to the Dug. "I'm sure we can settle this peacefully." He offered a brief smile.

The Dug glared up at Qui-Gon, lips peeling back from his sharp canines. Its eyes were full of spite. "Nine pegats," it snarled. "You pay."

Panaka was fuming, braced on his elbows in the dirt with the Dug's toes twisting his collar tight around his neck. A pair of Rodians watching from an alleyway chuckled to one another and touched together the suckers on the tips of their fingers. Other travelers, townspeople and dusty moisture farmers, were crowding around, watching the conflict unfold. Padmé was reminded forcibly of scavengers congregating around some half-dead animal, themselves starved and desperate. Tatooine, if anywhere, was the place for such people.

"I have Republic Credits," said Qui-Gon. "I'm afraid that's all I can offer you."

The Dug seemed to inflate, dragging Panaka up from the ground as he straightened. "Credits," he hissed, and then he spat at Qui-Gon's feet. "No good, schutta."

"Ey tana sho schutta, Sebulba," came another voice. Padmé looked up, bemused. As did Qui-Gon. A young man was making his way through the crowd toward the leering Dug. He was compact, his features striking rather than handsome. The Dug, Sebulba, looked at him with utter loathing-and a trace of fear. "Picking on off-worlders again?" asked the man, arching an eyebrow. He could not have been a day past sixteen, but he seemed unafraid of the bullying Dug. "Jabba has rules about that, and I'd hate to see you barred from racing." He smiled a hungry, vicious smile. "I wouldn't have anyone to scrape off the pod track."

"Yo sanna no badda, poodoo," coughed the Dug, and he shoved Panaka back to the ground before releasing the Captain's collar. Sebulba gave the young man one last lingering look of pure hatred, and then he slunk away into the dispersing crowd.

Panaka got to his feet and brushed dust from his rough shirt, scowling at the Dug's retreating back. His left hand hovered close to the blaster at his hip. The R2 unit beeped mournfully.

"Anakin Skywalker," said the stranger to Panaka as they shook hands. "You don't want to cross Sebulba. He'll knife you if he thinks he can get away with it, and he wins big around here. So he can, most of the time. Get away with it, I mean." He flashed a grin at Padmé, who forced herself to smile in return.

Panaka grunted. His eyes were still fixed on the place in the crowd where Sebulba had vanished. Padmé put a hand on his arm. "Let it go," she said. "We have more important things to worry about."

"That's a slick astro droid," said Anakin, glancing at the R2 unit beside Qui-Gon. "If you're looking to sell I can give you a good price. Four hundred pegats, up front. Watto's Parts and Junk doesn't shortchange clients."

"Thank you," said Qui-Gon, "but no. We're looking for parts for a Nubian J-type. A hyperdrive. Perhaps you know where we could find one?"

Anakin nodded. "Watto has parts for a J-type," he said, "maybe even a hyperdrive. I'd have to check. But you'd be wasting your time. He won't take credits. They're worth exactly Hutt spit this far out on the Rim."

Qui-Gon smiled faintly. "I'm sure he and I can come to an understanding," he said.

Anakin looked skeptical. "Alright," he said. "I guess it's your time to waste. Come on. I'll take you to Watto's." He turned and started off along the crowded street, whistling tunelessly to himself as he walked.

Padmé glanced at Qui-Gon. The Jedi was watching the boy go, his brow furrowed. "Is something the matter?" she asked him.

Qui-Gon said nothing for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was distant and unfocused. "No," he said. "I believe he means well, at least. This shop is certainly worth investigating. Come, our guide is getting ahead of us." He set off at a brisk pace.

As Padmé hurried after Anakin, the R2 unit rolling along in her wake, she could not help but wonder what Qui-Gon wasn't saying. Jedi, she supposed, were known for their secrets.

MAUL

Maul watched them enter the city, watched them as they mixed with the locals. Only one Jedi, the older of the two, was with the Senator and her guard dog. That was no matter. The other, the fierce one, waited with their damaged ship. He would not flee without his Master. Maul flattened himself against the weather-smoothed roof of the mud hut, careful to keep out of sight. Lord Sidious wanted the Jedi dead, and badly enough to order Maul away from Naboo before the Federation worms had truly secured their hold on it. But Maul did not complain. This was the hunt, the purest and most elemental application of his talents.

Death. Destruction. Terror. He had been allowed the pleasure of killing Jedi only infrequently. There was a plan to be followed, a grand design that only Sidious knew. Secrecy and deception were the bywords of Lord Sidious's training. Always, when in a position of weakness, it was necessary to stay hidden in the shadows, to trust to the obscuring caul of the Dark Side. Maul watched from the rooftops as the Jedi passed on through the crowd along the street. He went in company with a rough-looking youth. The others followed, but they were nothing to Maul.

Only the Jedi was real.

QUI-GON

The shop was much like the other hovels that crowded the streets of Tattooine, a rounded dome of worn sandstone and baked mud. A high wall topped with sensor arrays surrounded a veritable mountain of junk in the shop's back lot. The boy, Anakin, ducked through a low door and into the dimly-lit interior of the shop. Qui-Gon followed. The Force sang around the boy, moving in waves from the places where Anakin walked. He had seen it on their progress through the streets, had witnessed the nature of the young man in every shouted greeting and filthy look directed at him by the city's inhabitants. Skywalker was a man who aroused passions in his friends and enemies, a man for whom the warp and weft of the Force shuttled quickly. And he was strong in it. Stronger than anyone Qui-Gon had ever sensed.

Watto's shop was littered with refuse and merchandise, stacks of components and unruly heaps of junk policed by the fruitless domestic efforts of flat-headed pit droids struggling against the monumental disorder. "Watto!" the boy called as he moved toward the desk, kicking a pit droid out of his way. "Customers!"

A Toydarian, pot-bellied and unshaven, flapped like an enormous and disheveled bird from a room near the rear of the shop. He grinned and clapped his hands together at the sight of Qui-Gon, Padmé and Panaka. "Ah-ha!" he exclaimed in a rough, gravelly voice. "Welcome, welcome. Off-worlders, I think? What can I do for you, eh?"

Qui-Gon returned the merchant's smile. "I'm looking for a replacement hyperdrive for my ship, a J-type Nubian yacht. Time presses, and I can pay."

Watto snuffled, his thick, short trunk of a nose twitching as he did. "Nubian, eh?" he grunted. "I might have-a something lying around. What say we, eh, take a look out back?"

"Yes," said Qui-Gon. "The sooner we settle on a price, the better." He fought to keep from looking at the boy, the boy who could be the answer to all his questions. It had been years since he'd read the prophecy, but those feverish Ubese scrawls still haunted his dreams. _The point of balance, the Chosen One, Avatar of the Living Force._ It was wild speculation. The situation required focus.

Qui-Gon turned to Senator Naberrie. "I won't be gone long," he said. The air rang in his ears.

"I'm sure I'll be fine," said the Senator.

Panaka scowled.

Watto flapped toward a cloth-draped archway at the rear of the shop. "I have eh, quite a selection," he said, leering toothily as he turned back to Qui-Gon. "A friend of mine eh... _salvaged_ a Nubian ship a few years back. Plenty of parts." He chuckled and swept the ragged curtain aside, gesturing for Qui-Gon to precede him into the harsh sunlight. A labyrinthine landscape of junk greeted them, scrapped droids and rusting airspeeder components sharing space with the detritus of a dozen worlds. It was impressive, in its way.

The boy's presence beat against Qui-Gon's awareness, rushing raw, untrained and unconscious through the junkyard while Watto buzzed between heaps of trash, gnarled blue fingers tapping out calculations on his battered datapad. Qui-Gon forced himself to stay in the moment, to let the Force eddy and surge around him. There was no moment but the present. There was no concern but the merchant and his engine. A goal. A destination.

Watto hovered beside an ornate, block-shaped drive inscribed with circuit tracks. "I can offer you twenty thousand credits, provided the engine is intact."

Watto's leathery brow furrowed. "Credits?" he growled. "Credits are no good."

Qui-Gon frowned. He drew on the Force and touched Watto's unruly, cantankerous consciousness with his own mind. "Credits will do fine," he said, motioning with his hand.

The Toydarian blinked. "No," he snapped, "they won't. You think you're some kind of Jedi? Waving your hands around like that." He snorted.

"Ah," said Qui-Gon. "Toydarian." He released his hold on the Force. He'd forgotten how resilient the pot-bellied fliers were to suggestion.

Watto sneered. "You want the hyperdrive, you pay in real money." He rubbed his fingers together and bared his tusks. "Not your Republic trash, Jedi. Peggats or barter, no _credits._ " He spat a gob of gluey phlegm onto the sand. "Maybe you have-a something to trade, eh? You need Nubian parts, you must have a Nubian ship..."

"The ship is not for trade," said Qui-Gon. "We have business off planet."

"Then you're shit out of luck," barked Watto, and he shrugged his sloping shoulders before flapping past Qui-Gon on a path to the shop's back entrance.

Irritation and disappointment rolled off of the Toydarian like a physical odor as he approached his premises. He had been hoping to make a bargain, Qui-Gon realized. Counting on it, even. "A wager, perhaps." The words left him before he knew he had spoken.

Watto turned, beady eyes narrowed. "What kind of bet, Jedi?"

 _I wouldn't have anyone to scrape off the track..._ Anakin's challenge to Sebulba seemed to ring in Qui-Gon's ears. "The next race at the local circuit, on your boy to win," he said evenly. "My ship to you if he loses, your hyperdrive if he wins."

Watto chuckled, grinning. "You want to lay a J-Type against my slave on the track? The boy can fly, I'll give you that...but Sebulba always wins. Always."

Sand swirled around Qui-Gon's boots, driven by a rising wind. He felt a sense of terrible clarity. "And?" he asked.

"Done," said Watto. He held out a hand and Qui-Gon shook it. Watto scratched his unshaven neck. "You can kiss your ship goodbye, outlander!" he said, grinning. "The Boonta Eve Classic is tomorrow. The boy is already registered. Be at the tracks at sunrise, eh? We'll have a bookie take the details down."

"Of course," said Qui-Gon. He smiled, which seemed to disconcert the jubilant Watto, but the Toydarian's good humor rallied as as they reentered the shop.

"Your friend is a stupid one, I think," said Watto to Anakin, who was buffing rust from a power coupling behind the counter.

The boy looked up, one eyebrow arched. "Why's that?"

"He's laid his ship on you taking the Classic!" cried Watto in his gravelly rasp of a voice, as though he was a small boy who had just been given his first speeder.

Padmé, who had been making a show of inspecting the shelves of broken merchandise, turned and stared at Qui-Gon. Her eyes blazed. "You _what?_ We can't afford to gamble, Mast...Qui-Gon! This is too important for-"

"I ask you to trust my judgment, Padmé," said Qui-Gon to the young woman. "I will explain when we return to the ship." _This is the reason the Force brought us here. This boy, this moment. Something great moves beneath the surface._

Panaka looked irate but said nothing. The dark-skinned man possessed, Qui-Gon thought, an almost frightening reserve of stoic, seething disapproval.

"Don't be late tomorrow, outlander," chortled Watto as he flapped toward the back of the shop. "I want my winnings ready to bring to the docking bay as soon as the boy loses, eh? No hard feelings, Anakin, but Sebulba _always_ wins." He left, still chuckling.

Outside the shop the wind had begun to howl. Anakin stared at Qui-Gon, eyes narrowed. "He's right," he said. "You're dumber than a Gundark to bet on me, especially in the Classic."

"I think we should leave now," said the Senator, speaking to Qui-Gon through gritted teeth. "I'm eager to hear your explanation."

"You won't want to leave town tonight," said Anakin. He dropped the power coupling he'd been polishing and came around the counter, wiping his hands on his trousers. "The sandstorms will take the skin right off your bones. You're so eager to see me win, you can come and explain it to _me."_

"We don't have time for this," said Padmé heatedly. "I _insist_ that we-"

"We would be glad to accept your offer, Anakin," said Qui-Gon. "I'm sure the evening will prove fruitful for us all." He smiled. Anakin did not return the expression.

Padmé fairly seethed as they left the shop in the young man's wake, squinting in the biting gusts. The streets were empty, or near enough. At the Senator's side, Panaka said nothing and wore his customary scowl while the astromech rolled along beside him. The wind howled and hissed, churning up sand from the baked and blasted surface of the planet. Anakin walked through it without pause, hands in the pockets of his trousers.

Qui-Gon followed.

QYMAEN

Qymaen's legs had been ruined by the blast. He saw them himself, when he was whole enough to be helped into a sitting position by the Chairman's medical droids. The left leg was gone from just above the knee, the right so charred and pulverized it hardly resembled a limb at all. His arms were little better. His eyes burned every minute of the dim, trackless days in the cavern laboratory as Bacta was daubed into his weeping sores, his ugly half-healed wounds. A deep, wracking cough had settled in Qymaen's lungs. It bent him double with pain when the drugs wore thin.

Tall, gaunt Muun surgeons came and went. They took measurements and readings, jotted down notes on their datapads and muttered to one another about interface solutions and kinetic joints. They made sketches of his unmasked face and thought it strange that he raged at them for it. They knew nothing of honor, of a warrior's death. The medical droids attending Qymaen were with him at all times to make certain the anesthetic did not wear off, that the pain of his wrecked body had no chance to cripple his sanity. They fed him, like a child in swaddling.

Dooku made appearances; he sat beside the slab table that had become Qymaen's world, sharing with the General the proceedings in the Senate and the news of the Federation's blockade of Naboo. Valorum, he said, was being pressed to respond with military force. There were riots on Coruscant. Naboo's Senator, Palpatine, was showing strong numbers in the electoral polls. Qymaen listened to the news Dooku brought him, and he said nothing. His shameful life stretched on and on inside the scorched and battered husk of his body.

And then the day came, weeks or months from his crippling, when Chairman Hill appeared at his side to inform him that the surgeons were ready to begin. Qymaen shook with sobs of gratitude and relief. He wept and his tearless eyes burned. At last. _At last._ Even as Qymaen rejoiced, part of him hoped that he might die on the surgery table. Anything for release.

They cut his legs away the next morning. He watched them do it through a haze of soporifics and kolto serum, his eyes sliding in and out of focus. The tall Muun in their long, loose white robes and surgical masks looked like ghosts as they sawed through cracked and twisted bones, sutured burnt flesh and made marks in dark ink on Qymaen's skin. Where to cut, what to remove. Piece by piece they stripped his body down to its bare essentials, pausing every so often to douse him in Bacta. To staunch the bleeding. Qymaen's head lolled against its restraints. He could feel the heat and pressure of surgical lasers slicing through his arms, removing the dead muscle and broken bones. His arms that had held Ronderu, that had held his sons, his wives. His swords. He moaned, choking on the roll of leather between his teeth.

Days passed in a meaningless slurry of dull pain and half-thought. Qymaen slept and woke and lost the will to distinguish the difference. They snipped the burned flesh from his face, exposing raw muscle and open nerves. He felt nothing, until they began to remake him. Solder burned his flesh with white-hot agony, slicing through drugs and torpor to the center of his brain. He screamed until his voice was broken and blood ran down his flayed chin.

He screamed until they cut his broken jaw away.


	6. The Living Force

CHAPTER SIX: THE LIVING FORCE

PADME

The slave quarter loomed squatly out of the sandstorm, a warren of tidy mud-domed housing units fronted with moisture-sealed durasteel doors. Padmé staggered after Anakin's barely-distinguishable form, eyes watering in the cutting wind. There were few others abroad in the storm. A cloaked and hooded figure, bent against the wind and struggling for every step, passed between Padmé and Qui-Gon. Padmé glared at the Jedi. To gamble everything on a boy they'd only just met. To gamble her life on a race.

The arrogance.

The Jedi seemed unperturbed by the storm. His long grey-brown hair whipped around his face, but his stride was easy and unhurried. Panaka, by contrast, was cursing steadily under his breath. At last Anakin veered toward one of the homes, a drab sandstone unit on the first level of the tenement ghetto. He slapped a hand against the palm lock and the heavy door hissed open onto a small, bare-walled moisture lock. Padmé stumbled gratefully into the recessed room, followed by Qui-Gon, Panaka and the R2 droid. Anakin pressed another palm lock next to the inner door and the moisture-seal door slid shut. The inner door hissed open. "Make yourselves at home," said Anakin, brushing grit from his roughly-sewn clothes as he stepped into a small, shabby-looking cloakroom. A pair of hooded robes hung on pegs by the door.

Qui-Gon removed his poncho and hung it up. Padmé saw Anakin's eyes dart to the lightsaber hanging from the Jedi's belt. The boy looked up, saw her watching, and slipped from the cloakroom. The slave apartment's central kitchen and living area was cramped and shabby but spotlessly clean with braided rugs on the walls and stained glass in the windows. A middle-aged woman with a lined, careworn face and greying hair stood in the kitchen nook, a tidy blister abutting the main space. Her hands were covered in flour and there was a lump of unrolled dough on the scarred hardwood counter beside her. "Ani," she said in a tone of mild surprise, "who...?"

Anakin took a ripe boma fruit from a bowl on a low table by the window and took an enormous bite, juice running down his chin. "Don't worry mom," he said, looking back at Padmé and the others. "They're harmless. The Jedi bet his ship I'd win the Classic." He hooked a thumb at Qui-Gon, who nodded. "I thought maybe we could make them dinner, find out how he went insane. Qui-Gon, this is my mother Shmi."

Shmi Skywalker was, evidently, a woman of natural composure. She wiped her floury hands on her apron. "Master Qui-Gon," she said warmly. "Welcome to our home. I hope you'll forgive my son's rudeness. He often lets his wit run away with his manners." She gave Anakin a sharp look. He shrugged modestly.

"Not at all," said Qui-Gon, taking Shmi's hand. "Your son has already been of great assistance to myself and my associates." He indicated Padmé and Panaka with a gesture.

Padmé sketched a perfunctory curtsy. "Padmé Naberrie, madam Skywalker," she said.

Panaka removed his hat. "Rans Panaka, madam." Military habits died hard.

"Good evening, both of you," said Shmi. Her smile deepened the lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, but she remained a handsome woman. "Will you join us for dinner? We so seldom have guests."

"We would be delighted," said Qui-Gon.

"Entirely," said Padmé. She threw a vicious look at the Jedi, but he seemed not to notice.

Dinner was spiced Dewback cutlets, fresh bread with a thick vegetable paste for dipping, and a sort of fruit juice Padmé had never had before. She ate in silence between Panaka and Shmi, thinking of Naboo. Governor Bibble was an old man. Without the Queen, without the Theed government's stabilizing influence on the rest of the planet, there would be riots, economic collapse, a breakdown in relations with the Gungans. _I should be there, helping to keep things together. What am I doing on Tatooine?_

Anakin set down his fork and spooned vegetable paste onto his plate. "So," he said to Qui-Gon, "what brings a Jedi to Tattooine?"

"Complicated negotiations," said Qui-Gon, cutting himself a slice of bread. "My apprentice and I were assigned by the Chancellor to meet with the leadership of the Trade Federation and to arrive at a settlement over the Naboo blockade dispute."

Padmé froze with her mouth full and her cutlery poised over the still-steaming Dewback steak. Qui-Gon really had lost his mind. What had possessed him to destroy their fragile cover, especially when he had been the first to emphasize the importance of concealment. She looked down at her plate and began cutting the steak into perfect squares. At least, she thought, he had only told slaves. It wasn't likely that the Skywalkers led lives of political intrigue. Tattooine was so far from the beaten path of the Republic that slavery, banned with the signing of the Rights of Sentience by the Senate six hundred years previous, still thrived.

Anakin's voice cut through her thoughts. "Why bet on me?" There was a calculating look in his brown eyes. He seemed shrewd, far older than sixteen.

"Anakin," said Qui-Gon, "I will not insult your intelligence with lies, but I cannot repay your goodwill with the entire truth. Suffice it to say that I and my friends require passage off of Tattooine for critical reasons, and that I believe you to be a very safe bet."

"There is no such thing as a safe bet," said Shmi, as she set down her napkin. "Gambling is a criminal's province." She looked disapproving. "Still, I'm sure you have your reasons."

The rest of the meal passed politely and without incident. Shmi cleared the table with Panaka's help while Qui-Gon went out into the calm of late evening to contact Obi-Wan and the ship. Anakin stood, put his hands in the pockets of his trousers and looked straight at Padmé. The cold honesty of his stare disturbed her. "You're Naboo's Senator," he said.

Padmé felt suddenly uncertain of the young man. She got up from her chair and folded her arms, trying to inject something like control into the situation. "I-"

"You gave your real name," said Anakin. "Stupid, but justifiable. Most slaves wouldn't have picked up on it if you'd danced half-naked with a marquee over your head. I, on the other hand, watch news on the Holonet. You're better-looking in person, Senator." He grinned.

Padmé flushed. "I didn't mean to insult-"

"You didn't," said Anakin, his grin fading. "But some of us listen, Senator. Try to keep that in mind next time you go dancing half-naked in a slave ghetto."

He left the room, whistling tunelessly to himself. Padmé ground her teeth in frustration and embarrassment. The astromech's single large photoreceptor moved between Padmé and the door Anakin had left through. He made a mournful beeping sound. Padmé sank back into her chair, feeling small and petty. She had criticized Qui-Gon for his presumptions, but she was just as guilty. Just as susceptible to ego. At least the Jedi, she hoped, had a plan.

QYMAEN

Qymaen dreamed of the sands of Kalee, of the crash and terror of battle, of lying with Ronderu in the reeds by the great river. He had led the Kaleesh against their cowardly foes, had slaughtered hundreds with the strength of his arms and thousands with the cunning of his stratagems. Now he struggled even to walk. His legs were not his own. His body was an unfamiliar shell, a husk to hold the broken remnants of Qymaen jai Shaleel. Sensors fed information to his shell-shocked brain, imparting unfamiliar stimuli. His clawed feet gripped the rough floor of the cavern, their design forcing him to stand birdlike on his toes. Muun surgeons and technicians watched in silence, fingers poised over datapads. Qymaen took a step, the servos and tension-cables in his legs whirring to compensate for the shifting of his weight. He swayed, then recovered his balance.

There were other tests, other days of grueling rehabilitation. He grew stronger, more sure of himself. Chairman Hill told him that he was on Geonosis, though Qymaen never asked and did not care. One planet was the same as another. He sat in the darkness, taking his nourishment through a tube. They had not been able to salvage his mouth.

The Banking Clan's engineers returned Qymaen again and again to the nightmarish slab, to tear open the housings of his Durasteel prison and tinker with wires and circuit boards. They drilled through his skull, through the white skull-mask that had become his face. Their instruments probed his brain, mapped connections and installed the hardware that would integrate the frail wreckage of his flesh with the body they had built for him. He was taller when he stood, armored like a war droid. A servant droid brought him a mirror when he asked for one and he spent an hour staring into it, absorbing the skeletal horror of his new self. Bone-white, pistons moving visibly in his arms. The arms themselves were a rough approximation of Kaleesh limbs, six-fingered with two thumbs. His yellow eyes stared back at him from a warrior's mask grafted to the skinless horror of his face. He smashed the mirror, and then the droid. The technicians sedated him for a week.

The Count made an appearance in the second month of Qymaen's recovery, arriving without warning in the cavern beneath the ground. Qymaen looked up from his contemplation of the stone floor. The backswept auditory fins to either side of his mask clicked into place and he heard Dooku's footsteps as clearly as if the Count had been walking through his skull.

"You look considerably recovered, my friend," said Dooku. Ventress was with him, looking blank and uninterested as usual. She prowled the cavern, pale eyes moving over the shadows. Qymaen watched her and said nothing.

Dooku cleared his throat. "The Senate remains deadlocked in debate, but public sentiment is fast turning against the Jedi. There has been talk of armament, committees formed to agonize over the moral implications of forming an army. The Kaminoans have offered access to a militarized cloning program, an entire line of genetically perfected soldiers based on a man named Fett. Senator Palpatine is, reluctantly, leading the pro-war movement in the Senate."

"What is this to me?" His own voice rasped against his hearing. It had been rendered deep and distorted by the machines that had replaced his vocal cords.

"You and I discussed the nature of your talents during our last meeting," said Dooku. "The time when I will require your services is fast approaching." Faster than Qymaen could follow, he plucked something from his belt and flung it.

Qymaen caught the metal cylinder on reflex. It was perhaps ten inches long, smooth but for a square plate the length of his thumbs. He pressed it. A meter-long blade of blue-white energy stabbed from the end of the cylinder with a muted _snap-hiss_. Qymaen looked up at Dooku as the Count drew his own weapon with its curved and beautifully worked hilt. Its blade burned scarlet, throwing the Count's sharp features into harsh relief. "Come, General," he said disdainfully, throwing his cape over one shoulder. "Defend yourself."

The Count's rush was swift, his thrust perfect. Qymaen came to his feet with a roar and turned the attack with the borrowed saber. The blades hissed and spat when they touched. The world dilated, became Dooku and his lightsaber. Qymaen's clawed feet gouged the cavern floor as he advanced on the elderly statesman. He coughed, the sound ringing behind his mask. The Count struck again and again Qymaen parried, but this time there was no respite. Dooku's saber was a blur of crimson, slashing and stabbing as Qymaen reeled. Their lightsabers clashed time and time again. Ventress watched unblinking from the shadows.

"You have anger," said Dooku, swatting aside a wild lunge and nearly decapitating Qymaen with his riposte. "You have hatred, jealousy, _love."_ He raised a hand and Qymaen was ripped from his feet and slammed against the cavern wall. The General struggled, gears and servos groaning with strain, but the Count held him fast in the grip of his mysterious Force. "You are powerless," snarled Dooku. "Victimized. _Used."_

Qymaen roared, trying to push himself away from the wall. His arms trembled, twitched, and unfolded just as the technicians had shown him. Dooku let his hand fall to his side and Qymaen dropped to the ground in a crouch, his four arms spread wide as though to embrace the Count. Dooku took a second lightsaber from his belt and threw it to Qymaen, who caught it. Green light flooded the cavern. "LIAR!" he roared. "You have _ruined me!"_ He flung himself a the Count, sabers slashing.

"Yes!" cried Dooku, a vicious smile splitting his face as he blocked and parried the twin lightsabers. "That's it, General. Let your hatred guide your hands, let yourself burn in the fire of your rage! Release your mind and know true power."

"I was a warrior!" howled Qymaen. "I had honor, wives, blood on my hands!" He staggered, blocking two of Dooku's lunges and hacking with his left hand saber even as his free hands groped for a hold on the older man's cape. "What am I now? A filthy DROID!"

The Count's ornate lightsaber flicked once, twice, three times through the air and Qymaen dropped to his knees as his own weapons clattered over the stone floor in smoking pieces. His anger vanished, sucked into a hollow place within him. Dooku took the narrow, tapered chin of his mask and forced his eyes upward so that they stared into one another. "Learn from me and you will carve a swathe of death through the Jedi Order that will not be forgotten in a thousand years," he said, his voice low and fierce. "You still mourn Ronderu. Under my tutelage, you can avenge her. You can make her name the death of the Jedi, the destruction of their power-mongering regime."

Qymaen bent double, coughing. What organs remained to him tensed in their synth-skin womb behind the durasteel armor where his chest and ribs had been. His arms twisted, joints locking, and became whole again. He stood, pulling free of Dooku's hand. There was a thunderous pause, a space in time. Blood hammered through Qymaen's ragged handful of veins, moving between brain and organs. There was nothing else to him, now. "I would give them a mask to fear," he grated. "A name for the Jedi to curse, and a name to honor Ronderu." He made a fist of his right hand, fingers clicking against the Durasteel of his palm. His breath rattled mechanically in his chest.

"Grievous."

Count Dooku returned his lightsaber to its place on his belt. "Fitting," he said.

QUI-GON

"He's very strong," said Qui-Gon to Obi-Wan's foot-tall holographic image, emitted by a comlink placed on the smooth sandstone railing of the Skywalker residence's back porch. "Stronger than you or I. Stronger than Master Yoda, even. I feel it in him."

The storm had blown itself out quickly. Sand lay heaped against the foundations of the slave tenement and its neighboring buildings. The air smelled dry and clean, utterly unlike the reek of high noon on the streets.

"Master," said Obi-Wan, his static-fuzzed voice terse with frustration, "we cannot jeopardize our mission for a...a feeling about a slave! That you've placed us all in his hands with your gamble is bad enough. I understand that the boy is gifted, but we _must_ report to the Council. As soon as we can." He looked uncomfortable, as though just realizing how openly he had disagreed with Qui-Gon. Obi-Wan was a loyal, intelligent and insightful apprentice-but the scope of his connection with the Force was that of a craftsman to his tools. There was utility, a sense of purpose, but no quest for deeper meaning.

"The boy _will_ become part of the Force's design," said Qui-Gon. "Whether we seize the chance to bring him before the Council or to let him languish here, obscure and unrealized, is not a matter for debate. If he _is_ the prophesied Chosen One, and I believe he is, then the dangers of our situation are only the barest fraction of what he will face. The Sith will move for him."

"He is too _old_ ," said Obi-Wan. "The Council will never consent to his training."

"Regardless," said Qui-Gon. "I will take your advice under consideration, Padawan, but I have committed us to the boy." He leaned closer to the hologram. "I have no intention, however," he said quietly, "of losing the ship should my feelings prove unfounded."

Obi-Wan looked troubled. "Very well, Master," he said. "Good night."

"Good night, Obi-Wan," said Qui-Gon, and he pocketed the comlink as the hologram vanished. He turned to reenter the tenement.

Shmi was standing in the doorway, a worried look on her lined and sun-weathered face. "He's a special boy," she said. "I've known it since he was young."

Qui-Gon put a hand on the balcony rail. "He is strong with the Force," he said. "Had he been born on another world he would have been taken for training at the Temple."

"You're going to take him with you," said Shmi. There was loss in her voice.

"If I can," said Qui-Gon.

There was a long silence. Shmi dried her eyes. "Thank you," she said at last. "He doesn't belong on this world. He never has. W-when...he was born, we lived in another place. I don't remember it. We left when he was still young, and came here. We were enslaved."

Qui-Gon felt the woman's confusion, the wounds in her memory. "The boy's father..."

"There was no father," said Shmi. Her tone was subdued, but dignified. She did not doubt herself in this. "I carried him, I gave birth, and that is all I've ever known."

"He may be of critical importance," said Qui-Gon quietly. "I will do everything in my power to see that he leaves this planet."

Shmi nodded. She put her hand on his. They stood at the rail for a long while, silent beneath the sea of stars in Tatooine's night sky.


	7. Boonta Eve

CHAPTER SEVEN: BOONTA EVE

ANAKIN

The racecourse had been set three miles outside of Mos Espa near the winter villa of the notorious gangster Jabba the Hutt, de facto overlord of Tatooine's criminal underbelly. The pods and their pilots were arrayed in three rows at the starting line, overlooked by teeming grandstands with seating for twenty thousand sentients. The massive turbines that pulled the tiny, fragile pods themselves hovered over the hardpan, nacelles pointing out into open desert and beyond to Mushroom Mesa, Ebe Crater, and finally the winding death trap that was Beggar's Canyon. Anakin stood beside his own pod, watching the other racers work while the suns came up. Pit droids scurried everywhere, checking power couplings and coolant levels.

The stands began to fill. Anakin saw his mother moving with Qui-Gon, Panaka and the Senator toward the topmost row of seats. He saw Watto arguing with a Gran and a Rodian as thousands streamed into the seating highrise. The wealthier spectators had cool, shaded repulsor boxes high above the racetrack itself, but the real money was in Jabba's private cliffside grotto. The Hutt himself reclined on a cushioned dais, surrounded by the hangers-on and sycophants who comprised his court. A Twi'Lek male dressed in long, heavy black robes was whispering into the Hutt's ear, or at least the side of his mountainous head, while Jabba sucked smoke from an ornate water pipe. The Hutt looked drugged and irritable.

Anakin squinted through his goggles to where Qui-Gon had taken a seat at the top of the stands. The Jedi was hunched forward in his seat, observant and intent, hands clasped between his knees. His long face was lined with concentration as he looked in turn at each of the racers and their pods. Qui-Gon was playing some game with this race. He needed the hyperdrive, yes, but there was more to it than that. Anakin was sure of it.

Stupid human. They'll be chipping you off of the canyon wall before noontime.

"Good luck to you too, Sebulba," said Anakin, turning to look down at the Dug. "Try not to choke on my dust."

Sebulba snarled and adjusted his goggles with his prehensile feet. You'll have enough dust to clog your fat mouth, human, he growled in the gutter argot that passed for a common language in Mos Espa. Watch yourself on the track. He grinned and loped off toward his sleek orange-and-black pod. Its two colossal engines, linked by a crackling rope of repulsor energy, formed a divided X-shape ahead of the slowly turning turbines that powered the famous pod's flight. Sebulba launched himself easily into his cockpit as the announcer, a spidery Duros with a deep, booming voice, started his pitch from his stand just above Jabba's grotto-box. Advertisements, accolades to Jabba for his generous sponsorship, a chuckling acknowledgment of the event's total illegality under Republic Law.

The other racers were priming their engines now, performing last-minute checks as their pit droid crews scattered for the sidelines. The spectators were cheering for their favorites as the announcer called out names. A fever-pitch of screams and applause went up for Sebulba. He raised his fists as the Dugs in the crowd inflated their throats and gave great barking calls of approval. Anakin swung himself up into his blue-and-silver pod as his own name was called to lukewarm applause. He knew his racer didn't look like much. His engines were unpainted cylinders, venting and machinery exposed, turbine nacelle surrounded by bright yellow airbrakes. He'd built it himself, and he didn't need a kriffing pit droid crew to tell him it worked.

"Racers!" boomed the Duros. "Start your engines!"

Anakin pulled back on the ignition primer, punched in the sequence to free the turbines for rotation and fastened his crash webbing. He looked at Sebulba as the other pods shuddered to life, engines coughing smoke and rising from the hardpan.

"Reeeeeaaaady!"

Sebulba spat at him and snarled. Anakin grinned. "Kiss my ass, beautiful!" he shouted across the starting field. Sebulba screaming something back at him, pounding the side of his pod. Anakin laughed out loud. This was real. This was easy.

"GOOOOOOO!"

He went.

DOOKU

Senator Palpatine sat in a high-backed repulsor chair at his simple hardwood desk. Behind him, Coruscant's skyline was highlighted against a brilliant sunset. He watched the holo-recording before him play out with unblinking eyes, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. The Kaleesh cyborg moved with impossible speed, four arms wielding four flashing lightsabers with brutal precision. The sparring droids Grievous faced never stood a chance. "Impressive, my friend," he said to the Count. "He can be counted on?"

"Entirely," said Dooku. He waved a hand and the recording ended.

The lights in Palpatine's office flickered back to life, revealing a tasteful and sparsely furnished space. Naboo tapestries decorated the walls. A bloodwood sculpture of a hooded woman with long braids and a single hand stood beside the Senator's desk. Palpatine stood, clasped his hands behind his back, and admired the sculpture in much the same way he had admired Grievous's demonstration. "And his tactical abilities?" He did not turn.

Count Dooku moved to the window to look out at the brilliantly-lit skyline, at the lines of traffic moving through the air. "He is unparalleled," he said at last. "Even our droid strategists cannot equal him. It is a pity he has no affinity for the Force. He might make an excellent replacement for Lord Maul."

"Maul is adequate to my purposes for the moment," said Palpatine. His left hand drifted to the surface of his desk. The fingers drummed. Ring finger. Middle. Index. Ring again. "He is a necessary tool, unsubtle as he is." The Senator's mouth twisted, but his thoughts were invisible to Dooku. The Count felt a twinge of annoyance.

"He murdered the Queen of Naboo in her throne room. He allowed himself to be seen by the Jedi. He has failed, Senator."

Palpatine half-turned, one white eyebrow rising. "And your apprentice would be better suited to the task? Precious Asajj? The woman is insane."

"I employ her according to her temperament," snapped Dooku, gesturing in dismissal. "Maul should never have gone to Naboo. He is a killer, not a bodyguard."

"The matter will soon be concluded," said Palpatine, displeased. His mouth was a thin, uncompromising line. "He has tracked Qui-Gon to Tatooine. He will put an end to him, and return to Naboo with the Senator."

Dooku said nothing for a long while. When he did speak, his voice sounded flat and terse to his own ears. "I have a meeting with the Archduke," he said stiffly. _My apprentice, I wish I could spare you a death at the hands of such an unworthy opponent._

"Good, good," said Palpatine, turning back to his examination of the sculpture. "Send Poggle my regards. Or Sidious's, rather." He smiled a thin, humorless smile. "I assume I'll see you at the preliminary vote."

Dooku left Palpatine's office in a foul temper. Aides, functionaries and his fellow Senators gave him a wide berth as he stormed out of the Senate Building's administrative wing and took a lift tube to the private Senatorial Docks. His solar sailer, a gift from the Archduke himself, was waiting on its landing pad. Dooku could not help but feel somewhat cheered by the sight of the exquisite vessel. A modified Punworcca 116-class model, the brass-colored oval body streamlined and decorated with subtle patterning in the Geonosian style, incised lines and slight differences in hull coloration. Two petal-shaped foils, one above the body and the other below, contained the apparatus of the sail itself. Dooku moved up the sloop's boarding ramp and pressed his palm to the locking plate on the seamless hull. A narrow rectangular door opened with a hiss and Dooku stepped into the ship's interior. He removed his cloak and flung it onto one of the empty seats before sinking into the pilot's chair. He could have summoned one of the chauffeur droids to convey him to Geonosis, but the thought of piloting the sailer himself was appealing. He ran quickly through the simple preflight checklist before leaving the docks and heading at once for high orbit.

The Count's clearance as a Senator let him bypass the queues of freighters, yachts, and other personal and commercial craft. He slipped through the orbital shields and left Coruscant behind, a great silver-black sphere crisscrossed ten thousand ways with lines of light and points of radiance. He pulled a lever and the sailer's petal-foils unfolded, releasing the silvery parachute-like sail. It billowed in the void for a moment before it caught, pulled along by traveling particles and the weight of light. Dooku pulled further and further away from Coruscant, and then he engaged his hyperdrive. The stars stretched, elongating from pinpricks into streams of light. The Count stood, stretched and flowed smoothly through the stances of Form II, Makashi. The familiar comfortable ache settled into his muscles as he sidestepped and lunged, eyes closed and body singing. He opened himself to the Force, let it roar through him in a wave eternally at the point of breaking. His feet flashed across the cramped deck. His arms flicked and twisted, parrying imaginary lightsaber strikes.

_I am a falling drop of rain. My passage is swift, my descent momentous. Ripples course outward and I am one with the Force, master of past and future._

_I am Darth Tyranus._

The Count ended his regimen an hour later, perspiration glistening on his forehead. He took a deep breath and forced down memories of teaching Qui-Gon the same techniques he still used, the same forms and meditations. Let Maul have his squalls of senseless violence, Sidious his cold-blooded schemes and manipulations. There was no higher calling than to live in tune with the Force, conscious of its movements. Even a Sith needed to respect and comprehend the Force, lest he lose himself in the raging sea of the Dark Side.

The sailer dropped out of hyperspace near Geonosis. Dooku stared down at the rough reddish skin of the planet, the birthing ground of the new shape of the Galaxy.

PADME

The second lap. Padmé watched on the colossal display screens hovering opposite the stands as the racers threaded a maze of stone monoliths. The pods flew at barely-controllable speeds, their engines howling in protest as they kicked up huge clouds of dust and grit. The pilots, faces blurred in the droid-transmitted holo transmission, leaned low over their controls. Anakin was the only human. Most didn't have the reflexes for it. He, though, was formidable. He seemed to see what his fellow racers planned a skinless moment before they themselves had time to act. His pod flashed across the screen, overtaking Clegg Holdfast and Ratts Tyerell. Tyerell, panicked, swerved and smashed into a mushroom-domed stone formation. The holo didn't linger on the crash.

Padmé felt electrified. She couldn't seem to tear her eyes from the brutal, hair-trigger reality of the race. Beside her, Shmi sat with her eyes closed at the holo screen. The older woman's hands were locked together in a death grip, her face lined with strain. On Shmi's other side sat Qui-Gon, his expression clouded and unreadable. He had spent most of the morning speaking in private with Watto, but Padmé couldn't bring herself to be curious. The race was still moving, still careering along its deadly course. Anakin was in fifth place with Sebulba in the lead, his massive pod somehow twisting through every maze and avoiding every obstacle. The Dug was a genius pilot. Anyone could see that. But Anakin was gaining.

The third lap. Endgame. Padmé's palms perspired. Panaka had joined the crowds on his feet and was shouting with the rest of them, fist in the air. Tatooine's merchant princes were cheering in their repulsor boxes above the tracks. Wild shouts drifted from Jabba's private balcony in the mountainside. The Hutt's basso roar joined the thunder of the crowd. The Duros announcer was shouting out the names and positions of the racers. Sebulba was still in the lead, tailed by Anakin now. The crowd was alive with feverish excitement, compelled to scream and stomp for every miniscule development. Sebulba nearly rammed Anakin as they pulled even and Padmé's heart jumped into her throat. Tears were running silently down Shmi's cheeks. Qui-Gon was sweating, his expression curiously slack.

Anakin and Sebulba pulled away from the ragged remnants of the pack. The roar of the crowd died down by slow degrees. Padmé found herself on her feet in the silence, Shmi's hand clutched in hers. She could see the pods in the distance now, streaking over the vast featureless field of the Hutt Flats with a cloud of dust at their backs. Sebulba was ahead again, pulling forward inch by inch as Anakin's pod's engines screamed loudly, straining for an extra burst of speed. They were close, less than half a minute away. Sebulba was laughing on the screen, a master at the peak of his career. And then his pod was rolling through the dust, one engine spiraling away into the open desert as the other exploded against a low rock outcropping. The pod flipped once. Twice. An explosion of oily flame splattered over the rocks.

Anakin streaked over the finish line and slewed his pod to a halt. He climbed out as the engines powered down and sank to the hardpan. The silence rang, huge and awful. Padmé couldn't believe it. Her heart was still pounding, her palms still slick with sweat. Qui-Gon was still seated, staring down at Anakin with weary eyes. Qui-Gon...

No. No, that was impossible. Horror tugged at Padmé's guts. It was impossible.

Slowly, as though the audience were waking from a dream, the applause began and built to a thunderous roar. _Sky-walk-er, Sky-walk-er._ Anakin was grinning, goggles pushed up onto his wild brown hair. He raised a fist, magnified to fifty times his size on the giant holo-screen.

ANAKIN

"You're free," Qui-Gon had said to him after the race. It didn't seem real now. Anakin sat in his cramped room, surrounded by all the unfinished experiments he'd started over his years as Watto's slave. A maintenance droid built from spare parts. A thumper for repelling kreetles. The model spacecraft he'd scavenged and built. He sat and thought about Qui-Gon's offer. Coruscant. The Jedi Temple. Could he really be free after so long? He had won the Boonta Classic, and now he had a chance to put Tatooine behind him. To leave his mother. He grimaced. Her memory was fading, and her temperament. He'd had to stop talking about the place they had lived before, the rich house in the mossy forest. Mention of it had upset her, made her confused.

Coruscant. The Jedi Temple. Anakin's pack sat beside him on his bed, already half filled with his meager belongings. He shook in the adrenaline-drained aftermath of the race, his first victory and Sebulba's last appearance on the track. That sobered his thoughts. The Dug had been a coward and a bully, but there weren't many pilots better than Sebulba.

"Ani?"

Anakin looked up. His mother stood in the doorway. "Mom," he said.

An understanding passed between them. It had always been like that. He was leaving, as she had known he would. He rose and hugged her, the familiar earth-and-spice smell of her filling his nostrils. She held him for a long time, crying silently, and then she stepped back and dried her eyes. "I know you're meant for great things, Anakin," she said. Her voice was tired, but clear. "Leave this planet behind. Go, and learn from Qui-Gon. He's a good man; I can feel it." She was crying again, but a smile deepened the lines at the corners of her eyes.

"I love you, mom," he said.

She nodded, looking tired and sad and proud all at once.

They left the house together, hand in hand, the house that had been their prison and their home for fourteen years. Qui-Gon was talking to Watto, who looked furious, while Panaka, the Senator, and their R2 droid waited in the street with the repulsor sled carrying their hyperdrive. A huge Dewback stood placidly in a harness attached to the sled, its dull green-grey scales glistening in the sunlight. "You swindled me, Jedi," Watto snarled, jabbing a dirty forefinger at Qui-Gon, who appeared nonplussed. Watto's wings were beating furiously and he looked even more disheveled than usual. "You helped the boy win, eh, with your tricks? Nobody beats Sebulba! Nobody!"

"Our business is done," said Qui-Gon to the bristling Toydarian. "The Hutts back all betting on the races, I believe. Perhaps you wish to bring your complaint to Lord Jabba?"  
Watto scowled. "Take the hyperdrive," he snarled. "Take the boy. You've ruined me." He glanced at Anakin. "Too old for the Temple. Enjoy Coruscant, eh?" Watto's words of parting were equal parts gruff fondness and irritated dismissal. Anakin felt a strange sense of loss as the Toydarian threw one last withering look at Qui-Gon before flapping away in the direction of his shop.

"Come, Anakin," said Qui-Gon. "The ship is waiting."

Anakin looked back at his mother, standing in the doorway of their home. She looked small. She smiled at him, and he tried to smile back. His face felt frozen. He turned, guts churning, and followed Qui-Gon as the Jedi strode away from the slave quarter and into the streets of Mos Espa. _Too old for the Temple..._ Anakin scowled down at the street, the site of so many of his adventures. They all seemed small now, petty and inconsequential. He hadn't even bothered to say goodbye to Kitster or Wald. What would they think when they heard where he'd gone? Coruscant. The Jedi Temple.

"You flew beautifully."

The Senator's voice startled Anakin out of his reverie. He forced a grin. "Thanks," he said. "It was more Sebulba crashing than my flying, though."

Padmé shrugged. She was a beautiful woman, her fine-featured oval face framed by elaborate braids. "I thought you did well," she said. "I could

Anakin blushed. "Thanks."

QUI-GON

It took the better part of the afternoon to install the hyperdrive. While Anakin, Olie, Obi-Wan and the R2 unit worked to remove and replace the damaged unit, Qui-Gon returned the dewback, cranky and uncooperative after its slog out of the city, to its owner. He paid the merchant, a scruffy Aqualish, and walked to the edge of the city where Mos Espa's domes and arches became a sea of flat, endless sand. The city was subdued after the events of the Classic. He closed his eyes and said a silent litany of remorse, immersing himself in the Force as he did.

Guilt ate at him. He saw the Dug screaming, wrenching at his pod's controls as the left engine simply detached itself and flew away, ripped free when Qui-Gon misjudged what it would take to stop the careering vehicle. He saw the crash, the explosion, and the wrenching cartwheel the pod itself had performed. Murder. Accidental, but no less final for that.

Qui-Gon turned his mind from the price of his gamble. He had, at least, secured some good from the dark situation. Anakin was free, and soon they would be en route to Coruscant. Obi-Wan and the younger man had taken to each other at once, examining the hyperdrive and discussing the various faults and virtues of the J-type line with the pilot, Olie. A smile curved Qui-Gon's lips, but a bitter one. Some prices were too high.

Qui-Gon left the city behind. He walked back toward the ship as the suns sank toward the horizon. The ship's engines were powered, sending out a low and rhythmic thrum, when he reached the shallow canyon it occupied. The sound of another engine joined the first. There was a ripple in the Force, sudden and violent Qui-Gon spun, drawing and igniting his lightsaber in one smooth, well-practiced motion. A stripped-down speeder veered past him, banking hard and affording a momentary glimpse of a tattooed face beneath the cowl of a heavy black robe. The Sith leapt free of his conveyance and the speeder crashed, bouncing three times before the tattooed Sith hit the sand in a crouch. "Jedi." His voice was raw and harsh. A red lightsaber blade flared from the long gunmetal-grey hilt in his gloved left hand.

Panaka appeared at the ship's boarding ramp. His hand flew to his blaster rifle. "No!" shouted Qui-Gon. "Take off! Go. GO!"

The Sith moved and there was no time to spare for any thought at all. He flew across the sand like a wraith and slashed at Qui-Gon's head with a roar of fury. Their blades crossed, hammering and flashing. Qui-Gon gave ground and the Sith advanced, his face a rictus mask of hatred, rotten teeth bared. The tattoos on his face shifted in the glare of their weapons. Qui-Gon gave himself to the fight, flowing through Ataru's quick and aggressive motions as the Sith's saber snaked and darted around him. There was no conflict. There was no separation.

There was only the Force.

The Sith lunged and Qui-Gon sidestepped, parried a vicious backswing and launched himself into the air. He twisted mid-flight, opening himself to the world of sensation. He saw the ship tilting toward him, sliding sideways through the air with its landing ramp extended. He landed on the thin metal gangway, staggering, and Panaka seized him by the front of his poncho and dragged him into the ship. They rose at a dizzying rate and the Sith faded until he was nothing but a black spot in the sand. Qui-Gon slumped against the wall and slid to the corridor floor as the airlock hissed shut. He was tired, impossibly tired.

Obi-Wan came running down the hall and skidded to a halt before Qui-Gon, his face ashen. "Master," he said. There was a long pause. Obi-Wan swallowed. "Are you hurt?"

"No, Obi-Wan," said Qui-Gon, and it took all the strength he had to keep his head from lolling to the side. He could feel Tatooine receding, could feel the Sith's corrosive presence in the Force as it dwindled to nothing. "I'm just tired. I'm not as young as I once was."

"I'm sorry I wasn't faster," said Obi-Wan, still somewhat grey. "I thought you would sense us, if we got close enough and so I had the pilot-"

"You did very well," said Qui-Gon. "I'm proud of you, Obi-Wan." He couldn't keep his eyes open any longer. He heard Panaka and Obi-Wan speaking, but their voices came from a thousand kilometers away. Blackness took him.


	8. The Force Shall Set Me Free

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE FORCE SHALL SET ME FREE

GRIEVOUS

General Grievous. He carried a planet's worth of sorrow on his shoulders, a generation's despair and degradation. A lover's anguish. A father's pride and devastation. A warrior's dishonor. His new name was a fitting cloak to drape his armored shoulders. He coughed and drew his lightsabers, four of them at once plucked from the holding loops in his heavy grey cloak. The blades ignited. Blue and green. He threw himself at Ventress, standing motionless ten meters distant. She was faster than the Count, but reckless. She left openings. In the still air of the Great Arena she looked like a statue, bald and sneering in her form-fitting singlesuit and embroidered skirt. Grievous lunged with a roar that rattled in his chest, but his glowing weapons found only air.

Ventress flipped neatly over him and landed in a crouch, skirts fluttering. Her twin sabers, their hilts curved after the fashion of the Count's own weapon, flew to her hands and ignited seemingly of their own accord. She leapt at Grievous, teeth bared, and he caught her blades on two of his own. She had a sunburn, something the paler humans suffered from on bright worlds. Her skin was peeling. Grievous threw her off with ease and began his advance, stabbing and slashing with all four sabers. Ventress retreated, scuttling back across the reddish sand. Her pale eyes blazed with animal hate as she laughed, high and ragged.

"Worm!" roared Grievous. He swung his top two sabers in a scissoring cut and stabbed at Ventress's belly with the others. She twisted aside and his bottom left lightsaber burned a gaping rent in her skirt, exposing a pale, sinewy thigh. Her eyes narrowed and her lips peeled back from white, even teeth. She lunged, sabers scything the air with a crackling hum. Grievous parried. He dropped one saber, caught it in a clawed foot and swung low at her legs. She rolled aside and came up in a crouch as Grievous balanced on one foot, watching.

Ventress seethed, her flat chest heaving.

Grievous moved first, and it was over in a dozen heartbeats. He disarmed her with a feint and a flourish of his sabers, punched her in the stomach with a durasteel fist, and pinned her to the ground with a clawed foot. "You lose," he rasped. "Again." A cough wracked his armored chest, but his lightsabers remained trained on Ventress's throat. She gave a miniscule twitch of the head, her chin rising ever so slightly.

Applause drifted from the Archduke's private box, high above the arena floor. Grievous turned and looked up, deactivating his weapons. Dooku and Archduke Poggle stood together at the box's carved stone railing. "Well done, well done," said Dooku. "An impressive demonstration."

Poggle uttered a series of unintelligible clicks and trills, his wings fluttering. He was large for a Geonosian, stocky and compact with a beard of fleshy tentacles growing from his chin and jowls.

Grievous removed his foot from Ventress's stomach and stepped back, replacing his lightsabers inside his cloak. The human woman stared up at him with flat, cold eyes. "You fight well," she said in a low, mocking voice as she came to her feet. "For a droid."

Grievous flew at her, arms splitting and darting toward his sabers as his cloak flared out behind him. He would kill her, hack her body to pieces for her insolence. White-hot fury burned in him, corroding reason and restraint. Ventress stood stock still, her face an unreadable mask. Grievous raised his sabers to strike overhand, to murder the offender of his honor. He could not deliver the blow. The cables and servos that drove his arms strained in place, grinding noisily.

"That is enough," said Dooku coldly. He strode across the arena floor, cape rippling in the dry wind, and stopped a bare meter from Grievous and Asajj. "Lower your weapons."

Grievous deactivated his lightsabers and stowed them away, his ruined half-face twitching beneath his mask. "I am no droid," he snarled, his voice choked and twisted. "I am a warrior. I am Kaleesh!" His words became a frenzied scream. "I am Grievous!"

"You allowed yourself to be manipulated," snapped Dooku, his powerful voice sharp and scathing. "Have I not shown you that to master one's opponent one must master one's self? Your rage, your fury, your loathing are tools, not goads for your enemies to prod you with. The moment you allow your opponent to choose the terms of your engagement, you are defeated."

Archduke Poggle flitted through the air to land neatly beside the Count, cane planted between his clawed insectile feet. He spoke again, gesturing to Dooku with a veined hand.

The Count nodded, his expression cold. "A point well made, my friend," he said, still staring with icy displeasure at Grievous. "You are not a brute, General. Not some common footpad to be bought and sold. Do not disappoint me again." And with that he turned and swept away toward one of the arena's entrance archways, Poggle limping along at his side and conferring with him in low clicks and whistles.

Asajj smiled at Grievous. "You're very stupid, for someone so clever," she drawled. "I wonder what he sees in you." She left, following Dooku at a lazy swagger that made her hips sway from side to side. Her skirt twitched through the dust.

Grievous hawked in disgust, the sound rattling deep in his metal chest.

PADME

Padmé stood alone in her quarters beside the vacant royal suite. She undressed and washed herself in the sonic shower, waves of sound and water playing over her skin. It felt good to wash off the dirt and grit of Tatooine. She left the shower, dried herself, and dressed in a black slip and cinched red robe of fine brocade. An hour pinning up her hair completed the illusion of Senatorial gravitas. She spent a while longer applying cosmetics, soothing her nerves with the dull ritual. When she was finished she left her quarters and wandered into the passengers' lounge.

Anakin and Kenobi were playing Dejarik against one another, their holographic minions carrying out their orders atop the circular board on its pedestal mount. Padmé sat down to watch, hands folded in her lap. Anakin's side of the board was thinning, monsters spent on half-realized strategies and abortive thrusts. Kenobi, Anakin's senior by perhaps eight years, retained the greater part of his strength but played it defensively, leaving nothing to chance.

"Ha," said Anakin, smirking as his holographic Gundark tore one of Obi-Wan's swamp slugs to pieces. "Take that, Jedi."

Obi-Wan sighed and leaned back in his chair, surveying the board with a thoughtful expression on his square, clean-shaven face. "Interesting move," he said, stroking his chin. A small smile appeared. "However..." He tapped a command onto the small keypad on his side of the board. Two of his surviving nexu swarmed Anakin's lone Gundark and pulled it down, triangular teeth savaging the holographic beast's thick hide.

Anakin snorted in disgust and waved a hand over the board, deactivating it. "Fine, fine," he said. "You win again." He slumped in his seat, eying the Padawan through narrowed eyes. "I still say you're cheating, though."

Kenobi chuckled. "Have it your way." He stood, his good humor fading. "You'll have to excuse me. I must consult with Qui-Gon."

Anakin nodded distractedly and Obi-Wan left. The younger man continued to stare at the Dejarik board, fingers drumming rhythmically against the arms of his chair.

"It must be hard," said Padmé.

Anakin looked at her, one eyebrow raised. "Hard?"

"To leave your home behind." She felt a wrenching in her stomach at the thought of Naboo under Gunray's heel. She had seen Neimoidia, a barren ball of dead earth leeched of every resource by the greedy Federation. Would they poison Naboo the same way? Would she return to see the skies burned and dark?

Would she ever return at all?

"Tatooine," snorted Anakin. "You'd be glad to get away from it too, if you'd lived there."

Padmé heard the bitterness in his voice. "You must miss your mother, though."

"I'm not a child," said Anakin. "This was my decision." He stood up. He was tall and lean and sunburned. "I love my mother, but this...this is more than her." He looked distant as he spoke, as though he were looking at something only he could see. He put a hand on the back of his chair and Padmé saw his knuckles whiten as he gripped it. "I can be more. Qui-Gon can show me. He says I have potential, that I'm strong in the Force."

"I wish you luck," said Padmé. She smiled uncertainly and rose, her skirts swishing over the deck. "The life of a Jedi is not an easy one."

Anakin's eyes cleared. He had an intense stare, almost uncomfortable in its focus. "I'm ready," he said. "I've had enough of the outer rim, enough of living up to my neck in the backwash of the Republic. I want to be where the laws are made, where the action is. I want to be a part of something. To help people."

Padmé folded her arms. "The Senate...isn't what it was," she said. "Things move slowly. There are Corporate Seats now, for organizations like the Trade Federation and the Commerce Guild. Baktoid Arms even has its own delegation. An arms dealer, with a vote in the Senate. And I'm afraid the Jedi aren't very popular just now. Count Dooku and his allies in the Senate are pushing to have them removed from government." _And now that I've crushed your dreams entirely..._

Anakin shrugged, his grin lopsided. "I don't mind a little unpopularity," he said. "I've spent my life in the Galaxy's biggest desert, working at a junk shop. This is a step up, Senator."

Padmé laughed. "I suppose it is," she said.

His smile faded as the silence deepened, not uncomfortably. He was looking away again, through Padmé and the walls of the royal cruiser to the cold void of hyperspace. Padmé half-turned, following the line of the younger man's vision. There was only the wall, and the thrum of the hyperdrive. She felt cold, and wondered what it was he saw.

QUI-GON

Coruscant, capital of the Galactic Republic, seat of the Senate and of the Jedi Order. It hung like a jewel in the void beyond the starship's viewscreen, the black skin of its single planet-wide city transformed into a maze of radiant seams and patterns by the glittering light of civilization. Qui-Gon stood beside Olie's seat as the Naboo cruiser joined a long line of diplomatic traffic bound for one of the gates in Coruscant's planetary shield. As always, the sheer variety, scope, and depth of _feeling_ radiating from the planet beat against Qui-Gon's perceptions like a maddened rancor. He took a deep breath to purge himself of anxiety, to shield his mind with the Force.

_I am a drop of rain._

A diode lit up on Olie's control panel, emitting a high-pitched ran a hand through his receding brown hair. "We're being hailed," he said. "Planetary shuttle control."  
"Answer the hail," said Qui-Gon."

Olie shrugged and stabbed the button with a gloved finger. A wash of static flooded the cockpit. Panaka clapped his hands to his ears and the Senator gave a little start. Anakin was too engrossed by the view of the planet to react. Obi-Wan merely looked disgruntled. The static worsened momentarily, then resolved itself into a man's brusque, clear voice.

"Naboo royal transport serial number X12-JR57-0081, state your crew, port of departure, and business on the capital."

Padmé leaned over Olie's shoulder and, slowly and deliberately, pressed the communicator button with a slender forefinger. "This is Junior Senator Padmé Naberrie of Naboo," she said. "I have a report to make to the Galactic Senate, officer."

The sound of shuffling papers ensued, then ceased abruptly. "Senator Naberrie," said the shuttle control officer, sounding harried. "Please exit your line and head for Senatorial Emergency Gate B-19. The Supreme Chancellor has been notified of your arrival, as has Senior Senator Palpatine."

"Thank you, officer," said Padmé, and she withdrew her finger from the button. The man's voice was cut off mid-syllable. The Senator took the seat beside Olie's and folded her hands in her lap. "Captain Olie, if you would?"  
Olie chuckled and gave the control yoke a violent wrench that sent the yacht spinning out of the traffic queue and into empty space. They streaked low over the faint haze of the planetary shield, passing from the night side of the planet into the brilliant light of Coruscant's sun. The planet below took on a silvery gunmetal sheen in daylight. Long curving arcs of starship traffic webbed the shielded atmosphere. Wedge-shaped Republic Star Destroyers cruised the space lanes, scanning the queues with long-range sensors. The royal cruiser flew between two of the titanic wedge-shaped ships, close enough for Qui-Gon to see the turbolasers on their hulls.

Anakin whistled.

Emergency Gate B-19 was marked out by flashing buoys and guarded by its own Star Destroyer, a new _Republic_ -class some overzealous naval officer had christenedthe _Relentless._ Padmé rattled off codes to her security officer and the shimmering envelope of the planetary shield slid open, joining the soundless void to Coruscant's polluted atmosphere.

Qui-Gon schooled his mind to silence and let the planet reach out to him, enfold him in its chaotic rhythms. The cruiser dropped through the shield, atmospheric dampers flaring to life around its hull as flames licked at its chromium plating in the heat of reentry. The maze of Coruscant's cityscape grew in clarity as the cruiser fell down through the clouds, shadowed by a pair of sleek, nimble V-wing starfighters with their s-foils locked in flight mode.

"Coruscant," said Qui-Gon. "The heart of the Republic." He turned to Anakin. "Once we've discharged our duty to the senator, Anakin, I will bring you before the Council. You will be tested for your aptitude and suitability."

"I understand," said Anakin. He was staring down at the surface of the planet, his brow furrowed in concentration.

Qui-Gon clasped his hands behind his back. Obi-Wan was examining the deck. _He knows the boy is too old,_ thought Qui-Gon, _but he doesn't see what Anakin will become, the potential he has to change the face of the Order._ The will of the Living Force channeled in its entirety, interpreted as spoken word. To know the Force not as an undercurrent but as a raging torrent, unchecked and fully realized. It would reshape reality.

"We're approaching the Senatorial Docks," said Olie, pulling up on the control yoke as the royal cruiser descended into Coruscant's air lanes.

Airspeeders, atmospheric craft, and private starships droned in endless streams between the planet's soaring towers and gleaming domes. Traffic buoys floated on repulsor drives. Deep chasms yawned between buildings that were in themselves as large as small cities. The life of the city pulsed in Qui-Gon's awareness, kilometers deep and impossibly broad. Whole generations had lived and died on Coruscant without laying eyes on the sun. Wealth. Poverty. Murder. Love. A thousand petty cruelties and inconsequential triumphs. The heartbeat of the Galaxy's capital.

The Senate Rotunda loomed on the horizon, stark in its immensity above a level section of cityscape. The Bendu Wheel flag, symbol of the Republic, hung in profusion from the lip of the great mushroom dome. The aircraft buzzing around it looked like insects, metal skins flashing in the sun. Anakin stared, awestruck. Panaka removed his cap and tucked it beneath his arm.

Olie brought them in low to the docking complex adjoining the Senate Dome. The building towered over them, a sheer expanse of durasteel and duracrete that seemed to stretch into the lower atmosphere. Clouds gusted around its crest and bas relief murals from a thousand worlds decorated the docking complex walls. Ships departed and arrived in a constant stream, ferrying the Senators of the Republic's myriad member worlds. Qui-Gon straightened, composing himself as the Naboo docks hove into view, already crowded with Senators, aides, interpreter droids, and merchants. Qui-Gon sensed several Jedi in the crowd.

"Naboo One, you are clear to dock," came the crackling voice from the communicator.

"Acknowledged, Senate Dock," said Olie, flicking switches on the control panel at his left. The engines began to wind down. "Bringing her in."

The ship coasted sideways into its berth, dwarfed by the arched ceiling of the complex. The Senator and Captain Panaka debarked first to enthusiastic applause from the staff of the Naboo Senate Delegation. Qui-Gon followed her, Obi-Wan and Anakin at his side. A distinguished man in his late middle years, prematurely white-haired, strode away from the crowd and toward Padmé. "My dear Senator Naberrie," he said, and he clasped her slim hands between his wrinkled ones as the applause died down. "I had feared the worst."

"Senator Palpatine," said Padmé. She looked relieved. "It's good to see you."

Palpatine turned to Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. "Ah, Master Jedi," he said. "The Republic owes you and your Padawan a debt of deepest gratitude." He ignored Anakin entirely. The young man was staring at the Senator with narrowed eyes, as though suspicious of him.

Qui-Gon inclined his head respectfully. "I serve the will of the Council and of the Republic, Senator," he said. "It was my honor."

"And mine," said Obi-Wan, bowing lower.

"Nevertheless," said Palpatine, and he shook each of their hands. His grip was firm, his hands callused and honest. Qui-Gon could not sense his mind.

Palpatine offered Padmé his arm and the younger Senator took it. Together, they walked toward the parting crowd of Senators and their functionaries. Qui-Gon followed at a respectful distance, the others pacing him. "A special session has been called to deal with the crisis," Palpatine was saying to Padmé as they passed beneath a towering archway and into the Senate building itself. "Chancellor Valorum is under considerable pressure to grant tax concessions to the Trade Federation and its allies, but the election next week will render his decision meaningless. He's dead in the water."

A tall, bald, dark-skinned man in the brown robes and off-white tunic of a Jedi detached himself from the crowd and moved to walk at Qui-Gon's side. "Hello, Qui-Gon," he said with a broad, brilliant smile. "Welcome back. The Council wants to speak to you as soon as you can make yourself available." Mace Windu had a powerful voice and blunt, uncompromising features.

"The senator can conduct her own affairs," said Qui-Gon. "I am at the Council's disposal. As it happens I have several matters to bring to their attention."

"Very good," said Mace. He glanced at Obi-Wan. "Bring your padawan as well."

Palpatine continued to hold forth on Senate politics as their small party waited for the arrival of a lift tube. "...and of course the delegate from Malastare is pushing to accept the Kaminoans' proposal for the creation of a clone army. Dooku is vehemently opposed, and Organa objects on principle..."

Qui-Gon stiffened. There was a ringing in his ears. "My Master has resumed his Senate seat, then," he said. It had been years since they'd spoken, not since the night of the fight they'd had before Dooku had abandoned the Order forever.

"He has," said Mace. He sounded troubled. He said nothing for a short time, and then: "Until tonight, Qui-Gon."

Qui-Gon nodded. "Until tonight, Master Windu."

The bald man swept back down the hall the way they had come, his robes swirling after him. Qui-Gon fought to quell the emotions welling up within him. Loyalty, anguish, remorse, frustration, and anger warred for primacy in his center. He took the Force into himself and let it wash his flaws away, let it scour him clean like a sandstorm or a deluge. He had chosen his own path, and it was not his Master's.

"Qui-Gon," began Obi-Wan. "Are you-"

"That will do," said Qui-Gon sharply. He regretted his tone at once as Obi-Wan fell silent, his expression stony.

The lift doors opened with a soft _ding._ "We hold an advantageous position, considering the gravity of the situation," said Palpatine as he led Padmé into the lift tube. "I am confident that this unjust blockade will create a strong sympathy vote in our quarter of the Senate, _and_ it will damage the Corporatist support base."

Qui-Gon and the others joined the Senators in the lift, Anakin standing awkwardly beside Panaka. Padmé's expression had become very grave. "Senator," she said, "before we join the session, I think it might be prudent for us to consult on...recent developments."

The tube, rushing upward now, fell silent. Palpatine's smile faded. "Developments?"

"Viceroy Gunray launched an invasion just before I escaped," said Padmé. "The Queen is dead, Senator. Theed is in Federation hands."

Palpatine paled. His hands curled into fists at his sides. When he spoke, his voice was terse and harsh with anger. "Outrageous," he said. "They _dare-"_

"They do," said Padmé, her tone grim. "We must push for a military response. A show of force, to convince the Federation that it cannot intimidate Naboo."

Palpatine looked thoughtful. He stroked his sharp chin. "Yes," he said.

The lift stopped on the hundredth level, the Jedi Legate, and Qui-Gon, Anakin, and Obi-Wan stepped out. Qui-Gon turned back to the two Senators, flanked by Palpatine's aides and the scowling Captain Panaka. "Senator," said Qui-Gon. "It has been a pleasure."

"Master Qui-Gon, Master Kenobi," said Padmé. "You have my eternal thanks." She looked at Anakin. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Anakin." She smiled.

"And you," said Anakin. He returned the Senator's smile.

The lift doors closed and the tube disappeared, carrying Palpatine and Padmé upward to the Grand Atrium that adjoined the Rotunda. Qui-Gon thrust the shadow of Dooku's presence from his mind and put a hand on Anakin's shoulder. "Come," he said. "We should discuss your meeting with the Council tonight."

Anakin nodded, still gazing at the lift tube. "Yeah," he said.

MAUL

Darth Maul stood before the mirror in his sleeping chamber beneath his Master's residence. He was naked to the waist, his inky black tattoos exposed in their full complexity. The jagged geometric patterns ran from the horned crown of his skull to the soles of his feet. He examined himself in the mirror's warped surface, turning his head first one way and then the other. He could not perceive the flaw that had allowed the Jedi to escape him. His body was a weapon, honed to a killing edge by years of grueling exercise, pain, and self-denial. He had killed hundreds of sentients, had murdered his way into the heart of the Black Sun criminal syndicate and dueled a Jedi Master to the death aboard a careening speeder in the sky over Coruscant's bottomless artificial canyons.

He was Darth Maul, the Lord of Pain in his Master's reborn triumvirate. He, Tyranus, and their teacher were the most powerful users of the Force in the known Galaxy. And yet the bearded Jedi had held his own during their fight in the desert, and then he had escaped. Maul let his rage flood him, let his tattooed lips peel back from his yellow and rotting teeth. There was no justice in it. The Jedi were weak, mired in the stagnation and limited mindset their teachings engendered. Maul snarled and turned his back on the mirror. He surveyed his quarters. Only a plain sleeping mat disturbed the flat uniformity of the duracrete walls and floor. How could the Jedi have bested him?

How?

Maul settled cross-legged onto the hard floor and let the Dark Side sweep through him in a cleansing tide, white-hot and corrosive. He sat absolutely still, schooling himself to perfect serenity in the heart of a maelstrom of hate and wrath. Loathing burned in his veins, pumped outward with each beat of his heart. He closed his eyes, contemplating the punishment he would receive when his Master returned from the Senate. It was immaterial. To Maul there was only the Dark Side, only the storm-wracked sea of his hatred for the Jedi who had so ruined his Master's proud order. He gave himself to it entirely.

Time passed. Thoughts formed and were burned away, leaving only the ashes of reason and a plane of formless emotion.

"Peace is a lie," grated Maul through bared teeth. "There is only passion."

_The Jedi are liars._

"Through passion, I gain strength."

_Hypocrites._

"Through strength, I gain power."

_Manipulators._

"Through power, I gain victory."

_Cowards._

"Through victory, my chains are broken."

_Weak._

"The Force shall set me free."


	9. Finis Valorum

CHAPTER NINE: FINIS VALORUM

ANAKIN

The Jedi Temple was smaller than the Senate Rotunda, but if not for that colossus of a building it would have been the largest structure Anakin had ever seen. He craned his neck to look up at its five soaring towers as Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon exited the speeder the Council had sent to collect them. They stood in the fading light on a sort of pier projecting out from the main body of the Temple, just below the sweeping stair leading up to its entryway. Robed figures moved alone or in in knots of two or three up and down the steps, dwarfed by the sheer scale of their monastery.

"The members of the Jedi Order have been trained here for generations," said Obi-Wan. He pushed back the hood of his rough brown robe and looked at Anakin. "Impressive, isn't it?"  
Anakin nodded. There was a feeling in the air, a sense of tranquility and reverence that permeated everything around him. "I've never seen anything like it."

"You're not likely to," said Qui-Gon as he joined them. "It was raised by the Founding Council after the Order left Dantooine. A triumph of architecture, unequaled anywhere." He sounded proud, but troubled. "Today, however, is not a day for a lesson in history. We have an appointment to keep." He set off toward the Temple's steps, robes billowing in the breeze.

Anakin followed, stomach churning.

The Temple's entrance hall was cavernous almost beyond belief. Every step and word echoed from the sheer walls and the vaults above. Anakin could not help but stare up at the frescoes adorning ceiling, a depiction of a Jedi being knighted by twelve robed Masters. Anakin remembered the hum and crackle of coherent light as Qui-Gon fenced the demonic Sith on Tatooine. He imagined the sound beside his ear as he knelt on a marble floor, imagined the moment...

He shook off his daydream, scowling, and quickened his pace to keep up with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. Jedi from hundreds of races milled in the entrance hall. Anakin had never imagined there were so many Jedi in the Galaxy. Bothans, Cereans, Humans, Twi'Leks, Zabrak, fishlike Mon Cals and countless others. Their robes swished over the elaborate patterns set into the tiled floor. Two great staircases swept up and out of the hall beside a ramp that led deeper into what Anakin imagined was the heart of the Temple. Chandeliers lit the hall with soft golden radiance.

Qui-Gon led the way up the left-hand staircase. The steps were so broad that twenty men could have walked up them side by side. Anakin tried to look composed and at his ease, painfully aware of his shabby clothes and weather-burned skin. Several of the passing Jedi directed curious looks his way, but none seemed inclined to approach Qui-Gon. Anakin stared back, unflinching, at the few who met his eyes. They all looked away, after a while.

They walked together down a long corridor with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the impossible city. Anakin stared out as he was walked, drinking in the lights and the traffic, the noise and the grandeur. He thought he heard the beat of some great mechanical heart.

Qui-Gon stopped beside a lift tube and turned back to Anakin and Obi-Wan. His expression was grave. "Anakin," he said quietly. "The Council may ask you questions of a deeply personal nature. Questions you may think they should not know to ask. I must ask you to answer them, and to answer them truthfully. You are far older than the children brought to the Temple for training, and the Council may well deem you unsuitable. If they do, I will train you myself, but I would prefer to operate inside the Council's law. Please, cooperate with them as fully as you can."

Anakin said nothing for a long moment. The idea of Jedi digging around in his head, unearthing petty wrongs and old memories, disturbed him. The idea of going back to Tattooine disturbed him more. "Yes, Master Qui-Gon," he said. "I'll cooperate."

"Thank you, Anakin," said Qui-Gon. He turned back to the lift tube. "I must ask you to wait with Obi-Wan while I meet with the Council. I must inform them of certain developments."

Obi-Wan looked frustrated. "Master," he began.

"I promise you, Obi-Wan, we will speak later tonight," said Qui-Gon. "For now, stay with Anakin."

Obi-Wan frowned, but he drew himself up and nodded. "As you wish, Master."

Qui-Gon gave Anakin a long, penetrating look and then stepped into the open lift and sped upward and out of view.

Anakin nodded to Obi-Wan, then moved to the window and looked out over Coruscant. He was drawn back to its glittering panorama, to the towers and domes and cupolas and lines of bright firefly traffic. He could hear its heartbeat, feel its colossal pulse. It felt good, to stand so close to the seat of the Galaxy's greatest power. It felt _right_.

He wondered where Padmé was.

PADME

The Rotunda greeted her with a wave of cheers and boos as Naboo's Senatorial pod floated out into the center of the room where Valorum's podium loomed. Padmé kept her head high. The strings of seed pearls dangling from her headpiece clicked together as the pod coasted to a halt five meters from the podium, resting on its repulsors.

"The Chair recognizes Senators Palpatine and Naberrie of Naboo," said Valorum, his amplified voice echoing around the cavernous chamber. Grudgingly, the Senate quieted. Padmé steeled herself, breathing deeply as silence settled.

"My fellow Senators," began Palpatine, sweeping the room with his calm blue gaze. "We stand at a turning point in Galactic history. This Republic has stood for a thousand generations, built on democracy and justice. All that is now threatened by the corruption that infests this Senate, the corruption that has engulfed Naboo in immoral and illegal war. The corporate interests that have insinuated themselves into this Senate are buying themselves a future in which oligarchy and oppression rule this Galaxy!"

Padmé forced herself not to flinch at the tumult of sound Palpatine's declaration brought down on them. Huge swathes of the Senate were cheering for them, fists raised while others screamed denials and imprecations. Lot Dodd's mottled greenish face had gone a hideous shade of purple and his tall black miter was in danger of falling off his head as he shouted and jabbed a finger at Palpatine, lips moving soundlessly in the din. It took the Chagrian chamberlain, Mas Amedda, five minutes of banging and shouting to restore some semblance of order. Palpatine continued as though nothing had happened, the epitome of the committed statesman.

"We are presented with a choice. On the one hand is passivity, surrender to the whims of a troubled and dysfunctional Galaxy. On the other is choice, decisiveness, and right action! Senator Naberrie has come before you today at great personal risk to impress upon this august body the gravity of the situation." Palpatine stepped back, yielding the floor to Padmé.

Padmé stepped to the rail, her long black and red Senatorial gowns trailing over the pod's chromium flooring. She looked down for an instant into the depths of the Senate Round. The chamber narrowed, rows of pods spiraling down like the arms of the Galaxy. She swallowed. "Naboo suffers beneath the heel of the Trade Federation," she said, and immediately a low rumble of displeasure spread through the lower spirals of the Rotunda. Padmé ignored them. "The Federation has blockaded and occupied Naboo over a technicality in tax law, a technicality waived by the Republic!"

"Jedi high-handedness!" screeched Lot Dodd, and the Whipid delegate in the pod beside the Neimodian's seconded his outrage with a trumpeting roar.

"Battle droids walk the streets of Theed," continued Padmé, staring straight at Dodd across the gulf of empty space between them. Her stomach roiled. "Queen Amidala was murdered by Federation agents on the day of the invasion."

"Outrageous!" cried Dodd, but his shout was lost in a tumultuous wave of sound.

The Senate had lost all semblance of order. Dozens of pods drifted onto the floor, delegates shouting up at Valorum for permission to speak or simply bellowing their addresses at the tops of their lungs. Round holo-droids flitted madly around the chamber on their miniaturized repulsors, recording and broadcasting the chaos throughout the holonet. _Our finest hour_ , thought Padmé nauseously.

"Senators!" thundered Valorum, his voice amplified so that it cracked through the hubbub like a hammer smashing stone. Silence fell at once as all eyes and sensory organs swiveled to the Supreme Chancellor's podium. Valorum's face was drawn, his cheeks flushed with anger and strain. "The delegation from Naboo retains the floor. Conduct yourselves with some measure of respect and resume your proper places _at once._ "

The Senate pods drifted back toward the wall. Padmé saw Dooku, the Count of Serenno, staring up at her with a calculating expression on his handsome, aristocratic face. His pod was the last to return to the walls, though Padmé had not heard him shout. He didn't seem like someone who would lose his temper unless it was very, very much to his advantage to do so.

"There," said Palpatine, speaking in an undertone. "The bureaucrats take center stage."

Padmé looked back to Valorum, who had covered the amplifier with his hand and was listening intently to Mas Amedda.

Valorum straightened and cleared his throat. "The Chair will permit inquiries in an orderly fashion," he said brusquely, avoiding Padmé's stare. "Senator Argente?" He pointed at the horned and green-skinned Koorivar delegate for the Corporate Alliance.

Argente's pod floated onto the floor and the Koorivar stared at Padmé with brilliant green eyes from the shadow of his roughspun shawl. "Senator," hissed Argente. "You will forgive me if I appear suspicious. I wish merely to uncover the truth of this matter, and surely my esteemed colleagues will agree that the testimony of a single junior Senator is insufficient to condemn the corporation that united this Galaxy with its trailblazing of the Hyperspace routes." He pounded a fist against the rail of his pod as a storm of muttering threatened to drown out his voice. "I move that a committee be formed to investigate Senator Naberrie's claims!"

"I second Senator Argente's motion!" said Ask Aak, Malastare's Gran Senior Senator. He raised a reddish hand, rubbery lips quivering.

Others followed suit, at least a hundred representatives adding their hands and their droning complaints to the motion. Padmé stared at Valorum. Palpatine joined her at the rail, his wrinkled fingers gripping it so hard that his knuckles had gone white. Valorum cleared his throat. He looked profoundly conscious of the predicament he faced. He had the power to overturn the motion, to appease the Senate majority...and in doing so to lose any chance of retaining his office in the elections. Valorum was a moderate, and he would never hold his seat if the Senate remained split and contentious. Padmé knew what he would say before he said it.

"Motion carries," Valorum said heavily. "The Senate will stand in recess for one Standard Day. We will convene again tomorrow." The podium sank, its support column telescoping with a whirr of servos. The Senate floor cycled open and the podium vanished. A wave of murmurs and whispered conversation swept through the Rotunda as the pods floated back to their places and various Senators departed for their offices in the East Wing, or their residences in the city.

"Piece by piece they buy up this Republic," Palpatine said. He was staring down at Lot Dodd's empty Senate pod. "Our only chance is to put someone strong in Valorum's place, someone who can reign in the bureaucrats and bankers. Perhaps Senator Organa, if we could muster the support."

Padmé glanced at Palpatine. "I think we may need to aim closer to home, Senator," she said. It had been at the back of her mind since leaving Naboo. "The sympathy vote favors us most if we maintain visibility. I've arranged for Senator Organa to nominate you at tomorrow's session."

Palpatine looked at her. He looked tired and worn, old beyond his years. "Senator," he began. "I cannot-"

"Please," said Padmé. She put her on the older Senator's. "It can't be me. You know that. I don't have your reputation, your contacts, your skill at the podium..."

Palpatine chuckled mirthlessly. "Flattery, my dear child, will get you either nowhere or anywhere." He looked out over the Senate and was silent for most of a minute. When he spoke, he sounded resigned. "At tomorrow's session, you say?"

"Yes," said Padmé. "The Vote will be held the day after, and by the week's end we can agree to the Kaminoan offer and send a fleet to break the blockade."

Palpatine offered a tight, weary smile. "If we win."

"If we win," conceded Padmé.

DOOKU

Count Dooku sat on the edge of his bed, head bowed and hands clasped between his knees. Lines of light played over the heavy drapes on the windows of his bedchamber, moving in tandem with the traffic outside. Coruscant, they said, never slept. Dooku certainly felt no change in its rhythms between day and night. It remained the same festering hive of lies, graft, and corruption it had always been. He could feel it, a febrile twitching in the Force as a trillion beings went about their petty lives and committed all manner of petty sins. Coruscant was diseased. His and Palpatine's plot would be a lance to the Galaxy's foul boil.

Ventress stirred, the fine silk sheets hissing over her bare skin as she pushed herself up onto her elbows, pale eyes half-lidded in the dark. "Master?"

"Go to sleep," said Dooku. He rose from the edge of the synthfoam mattress, dressed, and padded barefoot to the sink in the suite's elegant wash room. He washed in silence. When he looked back to the bed, Asajj had curled into a ball and was snoring softly. It was remarkable, he thought, that such an utterly heartless woman could look so vulnerable. He fastened his cape's silver chain, swept a heavy cloak around his shoulders, and left his bedchamber. Restless, Dooku abandoned his apartment and took to the streets. He was a recognizable man, but his hooded cloak concealed his face.

The night was cool and windy, the elevated streets and canyon-spanning bridges busy with Coruscant's wealthiest and most powerful. Dooku moved through the thinning crowds, his mind drifting. Qui-Gon and his apprentice had returned. Dooku had seen them leave in a Council speeder, accompanied by a ragged youth. He smiled. Qui-Gon had always had a soft spot for the weak and downtrodden, believing the best of every unfortunate he met. He had been difficult to train, but the boy's understanding of the Living Force was unparalleled.

Dooku found himself relieved that Maul had failed.

Senator Wilhuff Tarkin was waiting for the Count on the Ranulph Tarkin Memorial Bridge, a grandiose monument to the elder Tarkin's military service during the Stark Hyperspace War. Dooku moved to stand beside the rail-thin man. He pushed back the hood of his cloak. "Elections approach, Senator," he said. "I trust your conviction has not wavered?"

Tarkin turned, his gaunt profile caught half in the headlamps of passing speeders. "I remain committed," he said. "Eriadu will sign, as will her allies. You're certain the industrialist seats will support the break?"

"Entirely," said Dooku. "Palpatine will be nominated at tomorrow's session, immediately following my own nomination. His candidacy will split the Senate, destroy Valorum, and show the Galaxy that Jedi judgment matters more to the Republic than its own laws.

"When he attains the Chancellorship, everything will have fallen into place."

Tarkin nodded. "Very good," he said. He strode away into the darkness, boots clicking on the polished durasteel of the memorial bridge.

Dooku watched the other man go. _Good._

QUI-GON

Qui-Gon stood in the center of the Council Chamber, facing the diminutive Yoda while the Council's other eleven members looked on in silence. The Grandmaster was scratching his pointed green chin with a long, yellowish nail. His expression was unreadable, and Qui-Gon felt nothing of his thoughts in the Force. Master Yoda had schooled himself to stillness and serenity hundreds of years before Qui-Gon had drawn breath for the first time.

"Disturbing, these implications are," said Yoda in his rough, gravelly voice. "If returned the Sith have, grave danger the Galaxy is in. Master Qui-Gon, are you certain that a Sith it was you faced on Tatooine?"

"I felt him in the Force, Master Yoda," said Qui-Gon. "If he was not a Sith, he knew their teachings. His hatred was refined, shaped, and channeled. Had I remained to finish our duel..."

"The Sith have been extinct for millennia," said Ki-Adi Mundi, a bearded Cerean Jedi Knight raised to the Council on the occasion of Master Micah Giett's death. He shook his oversized head. "Forgive me, Master Qui-Gon. It is a great deal to absorb."

"Understandable," said Qui-Gon, "but we may not have the luxury of time."

"Indeed," said Yoda, putting his hands on his knees. His large triangular ears wavered. "If returned the Sith have, move swiftly against us they will. Master Koth," he turned to the pale, dark-haired Zabrak in the seat beside his own, "an investigation, you must conduct. If your countryman this Sith Lord is, discover him perhaps you can."

Eeth Koth nodded his horned head. He looked troubled.

"There is also the matter of the boy," began Qui-Gon. "Anakin Skywalker."

"Jedi are trained from infancy, Master Qui-Gon," said Mace Windu. "Skywalker is too old to join the Temple Academy." Windu's tone was stern.

Qui-Gon met Windu's stare evenly. "I believe," he said, speaking with great care, "that he...that Skywalker is the Chosen One of prophecy."

Silence fell like a hammer on the Council Round.

Yoda was first to recover. "Proof, you have?" he asked.

"He is strong in the Force," said Qui-Gon. "Respectfully, Master Yoda, I believe him to be stronger even than you."

A low murmur ran around the chamber. Plo Koon, the tall Kel Dor who headed the Council's Judiciary Committee, tapped his sharp, heavy nails against the arm of his seat. "This is a serious claim, Master Qui-Gon," he said, his voice filtered through the rebreather that covered the lower half of his face and eyes. "The Council cannot proceed without an inquiry."

"I agree," said Mace, frowning. "I trust you do not object to our speaking to the boy?"

"I brought him to be evaluated," said Qui-Gon. "It is my intent to train him." _With our without your approval._

"A Padawan you have, Master Qui-Gon," said Yoda gravely. "Two, the Order's code does not permit."

"Obi-Wan is ready to face the trials," said Qui-Gon. "I have faith in him."

"We will decide his readiness when the time is appropriate," said Ki-Adi.

"Irregular, this request is," said Yoda. "See the boy this Council will. Promise you anything beyond that, we do not."

Qui-Gon stood silent for a long moment, wrestling with the desire to shout, to make them understand what he saw in the boy. Their future. Their salvation. With an effort of will he calmed himself, returned to his center where the Force moved in slow circles. "You have felt, as I have, the dwindling of your vision," he said, looking at Yoda though he spoke to all twelve Masters of the Council. "The future is clouded, the present difficult to sense. The shroud of the Dark Side covers us all. Anakin may be our best hope, a real and accessible conduit to the Will of the Living Force." He knew his philosophy was controversial, that even now half the Council was bristling with indignation, thinking that Dooku's student had taken too much of his rebellious Master to heart. He did not care. "We have a chance to know our fate," he said. "We have a chance to know, to truly know the Force in its purest form. Consider this. It's all I ask of you."

There was a silence. Master Yoda sighed. Mace Windu shook his head.

"See young Skywalker we will," said Yoda. "At an end, your audience is."

Qui-Gon turned and strode from the Council Round.


	10. 68424

CHAPTER TEN: 68424  
  
ANAKIN

Anakin walked alone from the open doors of the lift tube to the center of the Council Round. He felt the eyes of the Jedi on him. He felt pressure of their minds, the power of their simple proximity. The sense of mystique and grandeur was real enough to touch. Not knowing how to present himself, he sank to one knee. "Masters," he said, fighting to keep his voice steady. His face burned.

"Greetings," said the smallest of the assembled Jedi, a wrinkled gnome of a sentient whose race Anakin didn't recognize. He looked kindly, but there was a shrewdness in his large, heavy-lidded brown eyes. "Rise, young Skywalker. Monarchs, we are not."

Anakin straightened. "Thank you for seeing me." It seemed the right thing to say.

"The Force is strong with you," said a bearded Thisspiasian, his coils moving sluggishly as he shifted in his seat. "I sense great potential."

"I agree," said the bald, dark-skinned man, Master Windu, who had met Qui-Gon at the Senatorial docks. He had a serious face, lines etched deep at the corners of his mouth. "Master Qui-Gon says you're an accomplished pod racer. That's not something many humans have the knack for."

"I have good reflexes," said Anakin. "I always have."

"Many Force-sensitives do," said Master Windu. He fell silent, frowning.

Anakin swallowed.

The diminutive Master at the head of the Council hopped suddenly down from his seat. He walked toward Anakin, leaning all the while on a gnarled wooden cane. He halted a meter from Anakin, clawed hands clasped on the head of his cane, and raised a bushy white eyebrow. "From Tatooine, you are?"

"My mother raised me there," said Anakin. "We were slaves."

"A grave injustice," said the Kel-Dor Jedi seated closest to the door. He shook his yellowish head. "The Republic's arms have grown weak in the Outer Rim."

"Weigh heavily on your shoulders, your life does," said the wizened Master. He cocked his head to one side, the motion surprisingly birdlike for all his apparent age. "From infancy a Jedi is trained. Too old you are, young Skywalker. I sense much fear in you."

Anakin felt his lungs contract. He gasped. The eyes of the Jedi Council burned his skin, stripped away his flesh and bones and muscles until only nerve and thought remained. For an instant he saw himself as they saw him, a thing knotted and self-centered. Full of fear, attachment, jealousies and grudges. He saw his mother's face, kind and careworn. He saw others. Rough, unshaven Watto who treated his slaves only as roughly as needed to avoid being ridiculed. Sneering Sebulba, smashed to pieces on the rocks of the Hutt Flats. Qui-Gon stepping into Watto's shop, tall and powerful and at peace. Padmé laughing,

The snarling face of the Sith from Tatooine, red and black with rotten yellow eyes.

A mask.

Anakin gulped air. He was on his knees, hot tears pouring down his cheeks. Shame and bitter disappointment clawed their way up his throat, rising from the depths he had forced them down to when Qui-Gon had taken him from Tatooine. He opened his mouth, to protest or question, but the little Master held up a three-fingered hand. "Final, the Council's judgment is," he said heavily. "May the Force be with you." He turned and moved slowly back toward his seat, the end of his cane tap-tap-tapping as he went.

A callused hand closed on Anakin's shoulder. Master Windu stood beside him. "Come with me, Anakin," he said.

Anakin stood, too ashamed to protest, and wiped his face angrily on his sleeve. As he left the Round he looked back over his shoulder and saw the Council Masters on their feet, conferring. The Kel-Dor was staring at him, inscrutable behind his black eyeguards and rebreather mask. Anakin turned back to the lift doors just as they hissed open. Master Windu stepped in behind him. The doors slid shut. The lift dropped. The glittering cityscape stretched out below, the jagged horizon shifting as the lift car descended.

"I know the Council's judgment seems harsh, Anakin," said Master Windu. "Qui-Gon, however, is an excellent teacher. Watch him, and learn."

Anakin glanced at the older man. Windu, who had begun humming to himself, gave no sign that he had implied anything.

Anakin stepped off the lift and found Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan waiting for him, both standing at one of the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the hall. Qui-Gon turned as Anakin and Master Windu approached. His expression was grim. "They've denied your apprenticeship," he said. It was not a question, and Anakin didn't bother answering.

"The Council is placing you on guard detail," said Master Windu to Qui-Gon. "You'll safeguard Senator Naberrie and Senator Palpatine until elections are over. If you wish to bring Anakin with you as a private citizen, I'm afraid we don't have the authority to prevent it."

"Thank you, Mace," said Qui-Gon. He looked amused.

"May the Force be with you," said Master Windu, waggling his eyebrows. He turned and reentered the lift. It shot upward and out of sight.

Obi-Wan remained at the window, frowning out at Coruscant's brilliant nightscape. Anakin could feel the older man's consternation. He knew Obi-Wan valued rules, and that his Master's disregard for them made him uncomfortable. The Padawan was a good man.

"You understand, Anakin," said Qui-Gon, "that you will never be my apprentice in name. You may never be able to join the Jedi Order."

It stung to hear, but Anakin only shrugged. "You can teach me, though."

"Yes," said Qui-Gon. "I will teach you, Anakin."

They stood together for a short while, looking out over the cityscape, and then Qui-Gon turned and walked down the hall. Obi-Wan followed. Anakin watched them for a moment. He felt cold and distant, as though events had outpaced him, had left him behind. He left the window.

PADME

Bail Organa of Alderaan nominated Palpatine to the wild applause of the Senate majority and the stoic silence of the industrialist seats under Count Dooku. Padmé stood beside the older senator as he made his acceptance speech, his lined face bathed in the blue-white light of the holo-droids' recorders. "It is with a heavy heart that I accept this nomination," said Palpatine, "but in a time of such adversity I cannot refuse the call of this Republic. We are faced with grave trials, my friends. Our very fiber as a Republic, as a democracy, will be placed within a crucible and tested! I cannot step aside from my responsibilities as a citizen and as a Senator."

Padmé saw the Kaminoan Delegation staring hungrily up at Palpatine, their wide black eyes narrowed to slits.

"I present myself now as a candidate for the office of Supreme Chancellor."

The Senator turned from the holo-droids and the Naboo pod receded from the floor as the droids swarmed around Dooku's rising pod. Applause faded slowly.

The Count's speech was longer than Palpatine's or Valorum's, and for all his divisive reputation he held his audience spellbound for an hour. Dooku's powerful voice drifted up into the soaring vault of the Rotunda as he gestured and paced. "My opponents caution against the terror of corporate hegemony," he said, his tone scathing. "But there is a different tyranny, one they would conceal from us, one that has been stagnating at the heart of the Republic for thousands of years."

Padmé heard Qui-Gon, standing in the box behind herself and Palpatine, stir. His apprentice, Obi-Wan, stood beside Palpatine with a frown on his clean-shaven face.

"The Jedi," thundered Dooku. His voice echoed in the silence, deep and commanding. "The Jedi sit as a branch of this government, wielding their baseless authority with the arrogance of kings. At their word whole planets are condemned or raised to power, entire peoples chained to the yoke of the Republic or cast out to suffer in the cold. Look at Kalee, my friends, the homeworld of brave General Shaleel, who lost his life in this chamber. He died trying to right the wrongs the Jedi inflicted on him, on all the Kaleesh when they judged them war criminals in a war they did not begin!"

Padmé felt her pulse quicken. Dooku's words held the Senate silent and attentive, except for the soft whispers of interpreter droids translating for their masters.

"I will not suffer this travesty of government any longer," said Dooku. "I announce my candidacy for the office of Supreme Chancellor!"

Valorum's speech was short. His voice was hoarse, his shoulders slumped. He was defeated before the first vote was cast, a broken idol in his robes of state. Even his chamberlain avoided his eyes. Padmé pitied him as his podium sank toward the floor of the Rotunda and the voting began, each delegation speaking to a holo-droid connected directly to the Senatorial Archives. The candidates, forbidden from taking part in the vote, watched the proceedings with expressions of detached austerity. Bail Organa, standing in the pod beside Naboo's, spoke his vote loudly to one of the holo-droids as the machine made its way up the spiral. "Alderaan votes for Palpatine," he said firmly.

The droid hummed away from the tall, handsome Senator and toward Padmé. She returned Bail's smile, and then looked to the droid. Palpatine studiously looked in the other direction. "Naboo votes for Palpatine," she said. Her voice sounded small in the echoing vastness of the Rotunda. The droid's shuttered eye flickered twice, recording, and then it rose up and away toward the Eriadu delegation where gaunt, humorless Senator Wilhuff Tarkin stood waiting.

"Eriadu votes for Dooku," said the Senator. His expression was that of a man who had just been force-fed lemon rind and emulsion fuel.

Padmé sat down, her heavy black gown and red mantle pooling around her feet. The headpiece Palpatine's staff had chosen for her, a fan-like arrangement of black metal with a fringe of gold, made her neck ache, and she had slept badly before the morning's session. She felt tired and battered, beaten down by everything that had happened since the Queen's death. The voices of the Senate body washed over her.

_Malastare votes for Dooku..._

_...for Palpatine!_

_Corellia votes for Palpatine..._

_...Valorum._

And then, just as the sun began to set outside the windows near the dome's apex, it was over. With a chime, the holo-droids withdrew to the walls and the chamber fell silent as the votes were tabulated, checked and re-checked by the archival computers. Padmé stood somewhat stiffly and saw Dooku staring up at her pod. The former Jedi's face was unreadable.

"Ignore him," said Palpatine, speaking for the first time in hours. He put a hand on Padmé's arm. "We cannot afford to appear contentious if the Republic is to be kept together."

Padmé looked away from Dooku just in time to see one of the holo-droids drifting to the center of the Rotunda. It hung suspended directly above Valorum's lowered podium. Padmé held her breath. The droid chimed, and then a holographic display flickered to life around it. A mechanical voice filled the Rotunda, its pronunciations calm and uninflected Basic echoed here and there by special translations emitted from the speakers built into each Senate pod.

__Count Dooku of Serenno. Thirty-three thousand nine hundred and forty-one votes._ _

__Supreme Chancellor Finis Valorum. Eleven thousand and seven votes._ _

__Senator Palpatine of Naboo. Sixty-eight thousand four hundred and twenty-four votes._ _

"We seem to have won, Senator Naberrie," said Palpatine. The applause broke like a crashing wave as the Naboo pod drifted out onto the floor to take its place above the ashen-faced Valorum's podium. Padmé looked at Palpatine. There were tears on his lined cheeks, and his eyes were red-rimmed. He drew himself up, dignified in his robes of a deep blue. The red-orange light of sunset washed over him and he raised his arms, accepting the praise and adulation of the Senate.

Padmé stared straight ahead as the holo-droids returned to circle the pod of the Republic's newest Supreme Chancellor. Palpatine began another speech. He talked about necessity, about the hard and trying times the Republic would soon face. Dooku watched, stone-faced and silent. Padmé watched the Chancellor raise his fist to thunderous applause and a small, cold smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Naboo would not languish much longer.

Chancellor Palpatine would see to that.

NUTE

"The Senate has repealed the Galactic ban on military cloning," said Dodd. His holographic representation looked drained, his skin dry and cracked. "The full report is in my briefing." He waved a limp hand, indicating papers Nute couldn't see from where he sat on his mechno chair, halfway across the Galaxy in the throne room of Naboo's dead Queen. The chair was pacing in circles around the room, a motion Nute found comforting to his nerves. He didn't have to read Dodd's Senate briefing, though, to feel panic clutching at his chest with icy fingers.

"Palpatine is bluffing," he said, trying to sound dismissive. "The Republic has not gone to war since the Stark conflicts!"

"The newest Kaminoan line is combat-ready," said Dodd, his tone frantic. "The Republic is buying up transports on credit, making enormous orders from Kuat Drive Yards. Viceroy, they are planning an invasion!"

Nute fought the urge to scream and fling his holo-com disk at the nearest battle droid. He licked the edges of his lipless mouth. "Perhaps Palpatine is only a militarist," he said, wringing his hands. "We could be his excuse to form an army, but surely he will...bargain. Lord Sidious assures me that his contacts in the Senate are well-positioned to force a trade concession!" His voice sounded shrill and desperate even to himself.

Dodd looked doubtful. "Of course, Viceroy," he said. "I only wished-"

The other Neimodian's image flickered, crackled, and then vanished.

Sidious's cowled form replaced it.

Nute nearly fell from his mechno chair. The chair skittered to a halt, correcting its balance to help him keep his seat. He flopped against the backboard in a most undignified manner, his fingers clamped on the arms of the chair.

"Viceroy," said Sidious. He might have been remarking on an insect's presence in his dinner.

"Ah, Lord Sidious," said Nute, breathing quickly. He had never wanted a spice capsule so badly in his life, but he dared not take one in front of the Sith Lord. Sidious already though him weak, craven and undisciplined.

"Palpatine's victory is in perfect accordance with my plans," said Sidious. "You are to remain in occupation of Naboo, Viceroy. Do not shift so much as a single ship from the planet's orbit. Everything will proceed exactly as I have foreseen it."

"And the tax concessions?" Nute heard himself choke out.

"It will take longer than we had planned," said Sidious. "Events in the Senate are moving rapidly, and I must take every opportunity to exploit them. But rest assured, Viceroy, you will have your trade agreement signed and ratified. Palpatine is a diplomat at heart. He will not go to war if he can negotiate for peace."

"That...that is most gratifying to hear, Lord Sidious," Nute babbled, clutching at the front of his ornate vestments. "Of course the Federation will uphold its end of the bargain! We will remain here, in control of the planet!" His lungs felt as though they might explode.

"Good," said Sidious. "And Viceroy, do something about the natives. The Gungans have a habit of making themselves...inconvenient."

Nute all but clawed at his mouth in consternation. "Do something...about them?"

"Wipe them out," said Sidious. "All of them."

The hologram vanished and Nute was violently sick over the arm of his chair. He fumbled a spice capsule from the pocket of his dark robes and placed it on his tongue where it dissolved in a fizz of calming gasses, drifting back to tickle his nasal passageways and relax the twisted muscles in his throat and lungs. He sagged, boneless and quivering. His pupils expanded and his breathing regulated itself, returned to normalcy, and then slowed under the influence of the Kessel spice. He closed his eyes and took a deep, quavering breath.

"You seem ill at ease, Viceroy."

Nute's eyes snapped open. He sat bolt upright, staring at the old human standing in the doorway. Bibble looked tired and diminished, but he still managed to regard Nute with an impressive degree of dislike. The serving droids engaged in mopping up the Viceroy's vomit did little to increase Nute's standing in the man's eyes. The Viceroy scramble down from his chair. "The only thing that makes me ill at ease, Governor Bibble, is your continued survival," he hissed, jabbing a thin finger at the aging politician. "I would rest better if I had killed the Senator and burned her along with your Queen."

Bibble's lips thinned. "Unfortunately for your nerves, Viceroy," he said tersely, "you failed in that endeavor. By now the Senator will have made her report to the Senate and a relief fleet will be on its way. I look forward to seeing the resumption of negotiations."

"Out!" screamed Nute, sheer panic and horror breaking though the wall of vague contentment the spice always engendered in him. "Get out of my sight!" His heart was racing, his green skin slick with perspiration. A detachment of battle droids raised their blasters to point at the Governor, the last vestige of Naboo's pitiful little monarchy. Nute waved them back to their posts, his narrow chest heaving. "Go, Governor," he said in what he hoped was a smooth, dismissive tone of voice. "I'm sure there are stables that need mucking out in this excuse for a city."

"Doubtless the Viceroy has many important things to occupy his concentration," said Bibble through gritted teeth. "Which cloth best suits his complexion in dim lighting, for instance. Or which of his subordinates he'll take to bed tonight."

Nute paused halfway up the steps of the Queen's dais. He turned slowly and met Bibble's unflinching stare. He knew the human could not interpret his expression,s that his eyes with their sinuous pupils would appear unreadable and alien to Bibble. Nevertheless, the Governor knew. "Shoot him," snapped Nute.

Eight shots rang out and Bibble spun around almost comically, smoke trailing from his scorched hair and clothes. He hit the polished floor with a dull _slap_ of meat against stone. Nute stared at the corpse, sweat running down his back and dripping from his fingertips. "Purge your memories," he said aloud. "Erase all records of the past fifteen minutes, no, of the past day, and then remove this...this thing! Then erase your blasted memories again!"

The Viceroy swept down the dais and out of the throne room, wringing his hands in consternation. Alone in his usurped apartments he removed his heavy outer robes and ponderous headdress. He looked out over Theed as his serving droids massaged his skin with scented oils and soured milks. He took another spice capsule, ordered one of his tactical droids to organize an expedition against the Gungans, and then he took another capsule. His head swam.

Nute Gunray drifted through lurid daydreams, staring blankly out the window at the vulture droids that circled the carcass of Theed. He could not feel his arms, and there was a strange coldness behind his eyes. He closed them, and dreamed.

QUI-GON

The balcony, protruding from the side of the Senate Rotunda, was crowded. Qui-Gon stood at the rail between the Chancellor and Senator Naberrie. The Kaminoan delegation towered over all others present, white-skinned and sinuous. Yoda was there, looking troubled beside Mace Windu and Plo Koon. Obi-Wan stood behind Qui-Gon, speaking to Anakin in a low voice. The centerpiece of the moment, hounded with questions by Senators and bureaucrats, was the clone template himself. Fett.

Jango Fett was a compact, muscular man in his early forties. Dressed in a rough shirt, dark vest and workmanlike trousers, he appeared entirely at his ease in the company of the Galaxy's greatest. His son, Boba, was his father in miniature, though he lacked Jango's scars. Qui-Gon understood that the boy had been part of Fett's price for working with the Kaminoans. A son, and more than a son. The perfect continuation of a father's legacy.

Though, Qui-Gon supposed, Jango would never need to concern himself with fame. The white-armored clones marching onto their __Acclamator__ _-_ class transports would see that his face was never forgotten. There were a hundred million in the initial run alone.

"Impressive," said the Chancellor. He was resplendent in a regal black robe with bloused sleeves and a high collar.

The Kaminoan Senior Senator, Taun We, extended a thin and bone-white hand in the direction of one of the transports. "Each clone is tailored to exacting specifications," she said in her hollow, reedy voice. In her white body sheathe she looked like a towering skeleton, slender to the point of emaciation with spidery limbs and a flat, inexpressive face. "Their genetic material has been modified, of course, to engender obedience and promote growth. These clones matured in under four standard years, and the second generation will take only three."

"They'll do what needs doing," said Fett. He had a rough, blunt way of speaking.

"I'm certain they will," said Palpatine.

Qui-Gon frowned. One hundred million clones, the largest professional army ever employed by the Republic. Their white armor gleamed in the setting sun. Their boots struck the duracrete of Republic Square in perfect unison as their formations moved in neat white blocks toward the ships that would take them to war. Enormous six-legged behemoths of durasteel lumbered along between columns, Rothana Engineering's contribution to the war effort.

Qui-Gon glanced at Senator Naberrie. The young woman was watching the clones with rapt attention, pale beneath her makeup. Somewhere, a martial tune began. Fireworks went up over the square and the onlookers, millions of sentients on streets and rooftops, leaning from windows or sitting on repulsor platforms that hovered over Coruscant's endless canyons, began to cheer. The sound was like a slow detonation, unfolding and growing by degrees.

"This is a regrettable measure," said Palpatine, turning to Qui-Gon. "But a necessary one. The Trade Federation cannot be allowed to exercise its tactics of intimidation and brute force any longer. Their attack on yourself and Padawan Kenobi shows they are past negotiating with."

Qui-Gon nodded and said nothing. The Force around him throbbed and pulsed with the emotions of the crowd, with the uniform echo of cloned thoughts. And something darker. A shroud that curtailed the edges of his perception, hemming close his vision and his senses. "Can you feel it, Anakin?" he asked, not turning to the boy.

"Yes," said Anakin. His voice was strained. "What is it?"  
"The Dark Side," said Qui-Gon.

The martial music swelled in volume as a fresh wave of fireworks burst in the darkening sky, flashing green and blue and red. 


	11. The Flood

CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE FLOOD

QUI-GON

The Chancellor's office was a tasteful, understated affair, its only concession to grandiosity the sweeping vista its single floor-to-ceiling plate glass window afforded. Qui-Gon found himself distracted by the view. _I so seldom take the time to really look at Coruscant,_ he thought. Lights whipped by outside in the failing day. The city was coming to life, though the day's events had left Qui-Gon fatigued. There was no time to withdraw for sleep or meditation; events were moving quickly.

"You have the Council's support in this action," said Mace Windu to the Chancellor. "There are conditions to discuss, and a chain of command to finalize, but we will supply the Republic with a command corps of our most experienced Knights and Masters. We are loathe to commit to combat, but there are innocent lives at stake. We'll serve willingly."

"Excellent, Master Windu," said the Chancellor. "The fleet is nearly ready to depart. Please, convey my thanks to Master Yoda and the Council, will you?"

"It is our honor to serve the Republic," said Master Plo Koon, gesturing with a mottled yellow hand. He turned to Senator Naberrie. "Master Yoda suggests that, for the time being, Master Qui-Gon and Padawan Kenobi remain with you, Senator, as a safety precaution. Retaking Theed will not be a clean business, and your determination to accompany the fleet, while admirable, is not without risk."

"A wise measure," agreed the Chancellor. He turned to Padmé. "My lady, I urge you to accept the Council's offer. Your safety is of critical importance to the Republic."

"I would be glad of their protection," said Padmé.

Qui-Gon nodded and said nothing. This war, this deployment of the Jedi as soldiers in the army of the Republic, felt wrong to him. Not just in principle, though it rankled there, but in the way it  _felt._ There was a caul over these proceedings, a sticky film of uncertainty marring his visions of the future.

Palpatine clapped his hands together. "Very well then," he said. "The fleet departs tonight. Master Windu, I trust that the Council can have your candidates ready by Standard Midnight?"

"Count on it, Chancellor," said Mace. He sounded grim.

The Council's delegates left shortly after and were replaced by Bail Organa, a goateed man just into his forties, a pretty young woman in white robes that Qui-Gon didn't recognize, and the Cerean delegation. Panaka glowered at them. He had been even surlier than usual since their arrival. The Senators bowed to Palpatine, all except for Organa who bounded across the office floor to clasp the Chancellor's hands in his own. "We have a chance at making this Republic a better place," he said, "and you're the right man for the job, Chancellor."

"I'm certainly gratified you think so, Senator Organa," said Palpatine. Obi-Wan thought he heard the slightest intonation of disgust in the Chancellor's voice, but the next moment Palpatine was leading the Senator to a seat beside his own and the talk turned to Senate agenda. 

"Politics," Obi-Wan said to Anakin, his tone disgusted. "The Council shouldn't involve itself in this war. It isn't the place of the Jedi."

Qui-Gon should have rebuked his Padawan for speaking out of turn, but the truth was that the boy was right. And besides, Anakin looked troubled.

The former slave said nothing, his gaze fixed on he Chancellor who was deep in conversation with Padmé and one of the Cerean senators. "I feel like I've seen him before," said Anakin. He spoke quietly. "The Chancellor."

Obi-Wan chuckled. "That doesn't seem likely."

But Anakin's expression did not change. He continued to stare at Palpatine, brow furrowed in concentration. "I know him," he said.

"Anakin, Chancellor Palpatine was the Senator for _Naboo_ ," said Obi-Wan. He put a hand on the younger man's shoulder. "I doubt he's ever been within twelve parsecs of Tatooine."

Anakin turned to Obi-Wan, a strange look in his eyes. "I..." he began, and then his expression cleared. "No, you're right. I don't know what's wrong with me." He gave a rueful half-smile. "Unless he vacations in the Dune Sea."

 _Strange,_ thought Qui-Gon.  _Too strange to be coincidence._ He looked at Palpatine, watched him as he argued his points with dignity and conviction, as he forged bridges between the sentients invading his office even as his aides and servants shuttled his files and effects into the barren space.  _What does it mean?_

The meeting with the Senators dragged on until well after midnight. Palpatine stood at the window, hands clasped behind his back. Senator Organa, the Senator in white, Mon Mothma, and two of the Cereans stood with him, watching the last troop transports rise from the square and into space. The remaining Cerean was inspecting the art in Palpatine's office while Panaka stood stiff-necked as ever by the empty seats. The Force moved through the space with troubling intensity, gathering in tangled coils around the politicians. Palpatine alone was unreadable, though he radiated vital energy. He and Mon Mothma had drafted three separate versions of a new piece of legislation that protected global debtors from armed reprisal, all while engaging in spirited debate over tax law and immigration reform for the capital.

Qui-Gon paced the room with Senator Naberrie. She seemed strangely awkward, her typical composure damaged by exhaustion and overstimulation. "I never thanked you for getting me off of Naboo," she said as they moved through the reception area, passing a half-completed mural of the Sith Wars that Palpatine had ordered brought out of storage. "You were very brave."

Qui-Gon paused to examine the bronzium tiles that made up the mural. "It was my duty, Senator. I'm glad that I could be of assistance."

She seemed on the verge of saying something more, but at that moment the Chancellor's desk comlink chimed. Palpatine strode to the desk and the holographic image of a young man in an officer's smart grey uniform appeared above the projection plate. "What is it?" asked the Chancellor.

"Chancellor," said the young officer, "the shuttles are waiting at the Senatorial Docks for Senator Naberrie and Master Qui-Gon. The First Fleet is ready to depart."

"Thank you, Lieutenant Piett," said the Chancellor, and he silenced the intercom with a wave of his hand before turning to Qui-Gon. "I believe that is your cue, Master Jedi."

Qui-Gon bowed from the waist. "It's been an honor, Chancellor. May the Force be with you."

"And you, Master Jedi," said Palpatine with a smile. "And you."

GRIEVOUS

General Grievous circled the tactical table, his dry yellow eyes narrowed to slits as he surveyed the holographic displays of the Federation fleet in orbit over Naboo. His metal claws clicked against the stone floor of Poggle's War Room, deep in the bowels of the Archduke's hive. He was alone in the dim light, alone but for the silent droids.

 _A General must have his bodyguards,_ Dooku had said when Grievous had protested. And so the droids had been delivered, IG-1000 MagnaGuards equipped with state-of-the-art combat programming and shock staves designed to block a lightsaber. They lurked in the shadows by the walls, their red eyes glowing in the dark. Grievous had ordered the Geonosian drones who tended his quarters to drape the things with heavy cloaks to hide their skeletal frames. He hated the sight of other droids, loathed them with a furious and gnawing intensity.

Droids were a coward's weapon, a weakling's tool. Grievous of the Kaleesh fought his own battles. He took a deep, rattling breath and coughed before turning back to the table. The idiot Gunray's forces, twenty _l_ _ _ucrehulk__ -class cruisers and their compliments of vulture droids, were spread thin in an amateurish attempt to prevent a landing. Grievous paused to type out notes on the strategic table's holopad, memos on deployment that would be sent to Captain Dofine on the __Saak'ak__ _._ Perhaps the fools might survive the Republic's inevitable counterblow, if they listened to him.

"General."

Grievous turned, rising up to his full height. Count Dooku moved into the War Room. He looked tired, but pleased. "The elections have been settled," he said. "Palpatine has won."

"Your politics mean nothing to me," rasped Grievous. "How does this change our plans? When will the war begin?"

"I believe it is on its way to Naboo as we speak," said Dooku. He undid the clasp of his cape and swept it off, depositing it on a chair by one of the room's many viewscreen panels. "We, my friend, will be watching the opening movements from here."

Grievous slammed a metal fist onto the holopad, smashing the projector beneath it. "You promised me a war, Dooku!" he snarled, his voice catching in what was left of his throat.

"Patience, General," said Dooku, unfazed. His face was lit from below by the orange light of the strategic table. He looked old, almost corpse-like. "This is only a maneuver, a feint, as it were. We have discussed Secession. If it is to succeed, the industrialists must fear for their well-being. They must understand that you and I are their only hope for safety, that the Republic is intent on crushing their dreams of free commerce. They must fear the Jedi, and the Senate."

"And then?" roared Grievous, throwing up his arms. "We will drown in weaklings and cowards! Gah!" He hawked and coughed, pounding a fist against his chest plate until the mucous in his lungs dislodged itself. It dripped to the floor from the filter beneath his durasteel sternum. "Why should we saddle ourselves with them? Bankers and merchants. What is to be gained from such an alliance?"  
"General," said Dooku calmly. "I believe your species practices cremation, the ritual burning of the bodies of fallen warriors."

"Yes," said Grievous harshly. "We climb to the gods on the smoke and ashes of our selves, the remains of what we no longer need."

"A moving custom," said Dooku, and Grievous knew somehow that the Count, rather than thinking him mystical and deluded, was sincere. "And yet," said Dooku, "I imagine it is also a practical one. You burn your rubbish as well, don't you? Your cast-offs and your refuse, the corpses of your slaughtered enemies?"

"Yes," said Grievous. His claws scraped the edge of the table. "We do."

"And when you raised your bonfires, General," said Dooku. "Did you give each foe his own pyre? Did you cremate them with the honor you would have accorded one of your own?"

"Never," snarled Grievous. "It is unthinkable. Only the Kaleesh may-"

"Yes," said Dooku, and his voice struck Grievous silent. There was such conviction in it, such presence. "We will not be acquiring allies, my friend. We will be stacking corpses."

Grievous was silent for a long moment. He tapped his fingers against the table. "You haven't told me everything."

"No," said the Count. "I have not."

"Culling the weak," said Grievous. He narrowed his eyes and took a step toward Dooku, his cloak dragging over the rough stone floor. His breath rasped and rattled in his prison cell of a chest. "I approve, Count." A low, grating chuckle escaped his mask's air filter. The Count smiled. Grievous moved, vaulting over the table and slamming into Dooku before the old human could react. He seized the front of the Count's shirt in his claws, his lower arms darting down to pin Dooku's hands against his sides as he hoisted him up and slammed him against the wall.

"You _lied_ ," snarled Grievous.

Dooku looked only mildly discomfited. A vein in his forehead pulsed. Grievous felt something cold and steely wrap around his arms and chest plate, and then he was ripped away from the Count and flung back against the table. He gripped the table's edge and got to his feet, ripping free of his entangling cloak. Anger pulsed behind his temples, hot and poisonous, as he watched Dooku refasten the clasp of his cloak and brush dust from his shirt front.

The MagnaGuards stood in the shadows, unmoving.

"I regret your attitude," said the Count. "You have much to gain, General. The stage is set for the fall of the Jedi and the purification of the Republic. A new order."

"Lie to me again and one of us will go to the gods, Dooku," snarled Grievous. He flung back his tattered cloak, exposing his lightsabers. "I will not be toyed with." He coughed and more mucous dripped from his vents. "Let me _kill_ something."

"There will be ample opportunity for that, my friend," said Dooku wearily. "I believe we can dispense with pretenses, for the moment."

"Indeed."

The voice was cold and deliberate. Grievous turned back to the table. The two-foot tall grainy blue image of a robed and cowled figure had replaced the fleet diagram. Its hands were clasped, its face obscured by the shadows cast by its hood. "My apprentice, Darth Tyranus, speaks very highly of you, General," said the hooded form, gesturing toward Dooku with a lined and wrinkled hand. "I am pleased to finally make your acquaintance."

"Lord Sidious," said the Count. "The General and I were just discussing the impending Republic action against Viceroy Gunray's occupation of Naboo."

"Sith," snarled Grievous, peering at the darkness beneath Sidious's cowl.

"Yes," said Sidious. His voice was dry, like dead skin blowing in the wind. "Your loyalty and competence had to be ensured before you were informed of the true breadth of our designs. Surely, General, a being possessed of of such a tactical disposition can understand our caution?"

Grievous said nothing. It was known on Kalee that the Sith were skulkers in the dark, not true warriors but murderers, liars, and criminals. Men of the paper screen, the holy men called them, a name for those who skulked behind doors with poisoned knives. And yet Dooku had shown no sign of cowardice. The Count was a warrior, and an enemy of the Jedi. Grievous had seen him rail against their tyranny in the open Senate, an action that would have been cause for a duel to the death on Kalee.

"I understand, Lord Sidious."

"Good," said Sidious, and Grievous thought he saw the figure's blurred lips twist upward in a smile. "When the industrialist seats secede, at Darth Tyranus's urging and with Viceroy Gunray's utter ruin to spur them toward secession's open arms, I will see that you are placed in unquestioned command of the Droid Army.

"Your purpose will be twofold, General. The war you wage on my behalf must be a brutal and merciless one, something I gather you are not unfamiliar with. The horrors of war will be such that the Galaxy sees no choice but to place its security in the hands of its immediate rulers-namely the office of Supreme Chancellor."

Grievous narrowed his eyes. "And the second, Chancellor Palpatine?"

"Very shrewd," said Dooku.

Darth Sidious pushed back his hood to reveal the lined, distinguished face and silver-grey hair of the Republic's newly-elected Chancellor. "Very shrewd indeed," he said. "Your second purpose, General, is the destruction of the Jedi Order. To the last sentient."

Grievous leaned forward, hands pressed flat against the surface of the table. His respirator hissed loudly in his ears. "Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Lord Sidious," he rasped. "I will murder them." His claws scraped the table's steel edge, digging shallow furrows.

"I look forward to our association, General," said Sidious. "When the war is over, you will be welcomed back into the Republic as a hero and I will see to it that Kaleesh is restored to its former glory."

"So the Sith are generous," said Grievous. He chuckled. "I don't want your charity. I want blood, enough to drown in. I live in pain, Lord Sidious. Only murder can assuage it."

"Tragic, what the Jedi have done to you, General Shaleel," said Palpatine. "I only hope you find what you seek in the events to come."

"I no longer use that name," said Grievous. His breath grated harshly in the still air.

"Of course," said Sidious. "Forgive me, General Grievous." He raised his hood and the hologram vanished, plunging the room into near-darkness.

"Now you understand," said Dooku. His voice sliced neatly through the silence. "The Republic is ailing, plagued by greed, bureaucratic infighting and the oppression of the Jedi. In one swift stroke we shall remove every threat in our path."

Grievous stared for a long, long time at the blank tactical table. "Tell Dofine to move his ships closer together," he said at last. "That will make it look like a fight, if nothing else." He turned from the table, coughing again, and strode toward one of the gaping black doorways.

"Welcome to the fold, General," Dooku called after him.

Grievous laughed. The sound echoed from the walls as he vanished into the darkness.

ANAKIN

They sat in silence in the shuttle's passenger compartment, waiting as the small spacecraft made its slow ascent toward Coruscant's shields and the fleet of _V_ _ _enator__ -class star destroyers and __Acclamator__ -class transports waiting beyond it. Anakin drummed his fingers on the arms of his seat. He was enjoying the sensation of flight, the rumble of the ion engines beneath his feet. Qui-Gon sat beside him, lost in thought. Senator Naberrie had gone to the cockpit with Captain Panaka. Anakin felt out of place. He undid his crash webbing and stood, stretching, as the shuttle passed. Hands in his pockets, he left the compartment and headed toward the prow. The shuttle's other passengers were important to the war. The Senator, the Jedi, a pair of the Republic's new clones dressed in identical Bridge Commanders' uniforms. He didn't fit into the puzzle here. What would he do on the bridge of a star destroyer?

Why had Qui-Gon taken him along? For a bunch of philosophical talk about the Force? He couldn't do anything either of the two Jedi could, and the Council had rejected him. Anakin glanced into an open door and saw a pair of Clones donning their suits of white plasteel armor. It was eerie, seeing their identical faces with different expressions side by side. Anakin moved on. The cockpit door cycled open at his approach, and he stepped in. The Senator and the Captain were standing with their backs to him behind the Clone pilot and co-pilot.

"Senator, accompanying the invasion force is a publicity stunt, and a dangerous one," said Panaka. "The people of Theed will not think less of you if you watch the proceedings from the bridge of the __Republic__ _._ I cannot support your decision." Anakin could almost hear his furious scowl. "Just because the Jedi lead from the front, Senator, doesn't mean you need to."

"Leave your prejudices out of it, Captain," said the Senator. "I _will_ be accompanying Master Qui-Gon and Master Kenobi to the surface, and I'd prefer we discussed something else."

"As you wish," said Panaka. "My resignation seems appropriate."

Padmé said nothing. Anakin, one foot through the door, felt suddenly as though he were spying on something ugly and private. He took a step back and pressed himself to the side of the hall, too curious to leave.

"Palpatine and I tried for years to make Amidala see that Naboo was weak," said Panaka, his tone low and angry. "I tried to form an army, to protect our people. If you had listened to me we would not be-"

"I accept your resignation, Captain," said the Senator, cutting through Panaka's tirade.

Anakin hesitated, and then Panaka's sharp footfalls left the cockpit and the Captain strode past him without so much as a glance. Anakin could almost feel the man's anger. He stepped away from the wall, watching as Panaka stepped into one of the shuttle's compartments and slammed the heavy metal door.

"I'm sorry you had to hear that."

Anakin turned and met Padmé's gaze, shamefaced. She was standing in the doorway in her blue brocaded robes, her eyes rimmed with red. Her hair was done up in an elegant knot at the back of her head and she wore a fan-like lacquered blue headpiece. It set off her eyes.

"I didn't mean to," said Anakin, glancing around at anything but the Senator. "I thought I'd come up and...see the fleet." He looked back at her. "He shouldn't have talked to you like that. He was out of line. I could go rough him up, if you wanted." It was a weak joke.

Padmé laughed. "No," she said, taking Anakin's arm. "I'd rather watch the fleet. I'm afraid you're too fierce for the Captain." She led him back into the cockpit. "He's only a soldier, after all. What chance would he have against a Jedi apprentice?" The clone pilots remained silent and attentive, bent over their instrument panels.

Anakin flushed. "I was rejected by the Council," he mumbled. "They said I was too old."

The fleet was arranging itself in battle formation, great wedge-shaped destroyers arrayed in a firing line and shield formation ahead of the smaller transport ships. The enormous ships fired short bursts from their attitude thrusters, making minute adjustments to formations.

"Master Qui-Gon doesn't seem to have given up on you," said Padmé. She withdrew her arm from Anakin's and looked at him. "He seems to think you have potential."

"I do have potential." He said it coldly, without thinking.

Padmé gave him a sidelong look, but said nothing. They stood together, watching as their shuttle entered the fleet. Massive hulls and swiveling turbolaser turrets passed by to their either side, making Anakin feel like he was flying again through the caves midway along the Boonta Eve circuit. The _Republic_ hailed them and one of the clone pilots answered, holding a brief conversation with one of its brothers aboard the star destroyer. Anakin felt a sense of vague distaste. He wondered what kind of man Jango Fett was.

The shuttle docked with the __Republic__ and Anakin and Padmé joined the others at the airlock door as the landing ramp slid into place. The airlock cycled open, revealing a delegation of the ship's officers and rank after rank of clones flanking the path from the ramp to the turbolift like an honor guard. A pair of Senatorial Guards in their long blue robes and crested helmets, heavy blaster rifles slung over their shoulders, were waiting for Padmé at the base of the ramp with an aging, blunt-faced man in a Fleet Admiral's uniform.

"Welcome aboard, Senator, Master Jedi," said the Admiral, taking Padmé's hand as she stepped down from the landing ramp.

"Admiral Tagge," said Padmé warmly. "It's good to see you."

Anakin looked around the docking bay. V-wing snubfighters waited in neat rows beside weapon-studded LAAT gunships and the massive AT-TE walkers Rothana Engineering was churning out to meet the Republic's newborn demand for armor. Clones were everywhere, clad in the omnipresent white armor or else wearing coveralls as they crawled over ships and carried munitions from pallets to tanks.

"Remember, Anakin," said Qui-Gon's as he moved to Anakin's side, "this is not where power lies. Not truly. True power comes with understanding and with patience. Only by mastering your surroundings and your situation, by schooling your mind to their every nuance, can you control them."

"Yes, Master," said Anakin. He stared at the ranks of faceless clones, thinking.


	12. Theed

CHAPTER TWELVE: THEED

MAUL

He sat alone in a dark chamber adjoining Theed Palace's hangar bay, cross-legged on the cold metal floor. His lips moved, reciting the litany of the Sith Code. He could almost hear his master's voice instructing him from across the gulf of years. __The Jedi strive for emptiness in their meditation, for detachment and isolation. You must immerse yourself in sensation, my young apprentice. You must bathe in the world around you, and in the thoughts that course beneath the surface of your mind. Let purpose, not serenity, bring you the clarity you require. Let drive, not duty, guide your hands. Let your hatred, not your will, direct your weapons.__

Darth Maul opened his eyes. The doors to the hangar bay slid into the walls, flooding his chamber with light. A tactical droid stepped into the room, silhouetted against the dim lights of the bay. "Lord Maul," it said, "a Republic fleet has emerged from hyperspace."

Maul stared through the droid at the sun-stained sky of early morning.

Once he had stared up at another sky, had seen the Republic's ships thunder over another horizon as his home in the foothills lay burning. His family slaughtered, his homeworld annexed by greedy politicians and sanctimonious Jedi. His Master had found him sobbing in the ashes, had taken him away from ruined Iridonia and into the arms of the Sith. Darth Sidious had drained him of all his weaknesses, had filled him with the furious, seething power of the Dark Side and branded its signs onto his skin. He flexed his gloved hands, feeling the old fractures in his fingers and wrists. The broken knuckles, the crushed nails. His body was a totem to the brutality of his life, to the strength of his determination.

"Tell the Viceroy to remain in the Palace," said Maul. "Withdraw all troops to the city."

He stood, throwing his heavy robe aside. His hand drifted to the hilt of his lightsaber. "Begin transporting the citizens out of danger," he said. "Make it clear we want them kept safe, and uncoerced. If any of them wish to leave your custody, let them."

"Understood, Lord Maul," said the tactical droid in its flat, heartless voice. It turned and walked away, its metal feet clicking against the cold stone.

Maul took a deep breath, tasting the air. Vengeance. Retribution.

Death.

QUI-GON

The __Republic__ emerged from Hyperspace in formation with its twenty-six sister ships, their armored keels aimed squarely at the planet's equatorial blockade ring. The droid-aimed turbolaser cannon of the thirty __lucrehulk__ _-class_ cruisers opened fire at once, filling the narrow band of space between the two fleets with lines of hard red light. Qui-Gon stood with Admiral Tagge and the Senator at the ship's tactical table, watching holographic representations of the dueling armadas. Tagge had his fleet commanders on a mass comlink and was issuing orders. " _ _Resolve__ , focus all batteries on target sixteen. Transport group four, clear the gravity well and prepare to jump to the planet's magnetic pole. I want this done cleanly."

Around them the bridge was an ordered whirl of clone activity. A tall Kaminoan genetic technician in white robes stood bent nearly double at a surveillance terminal. The cloners had insisted on monitoring the action directly. To Qui-Gon it seemed morbid. The entire spectacle around the planet filled him with a deep and aching sense of dread.

"Senator Naberrie," said Qui-Gon. "I would urge you again to reconsider your landing."

"I will not," said Padmé. She was staring at the holograms of the Federation fleet, her smooth brow furrowed. "We'll go down with the next group of landing craft."

"As you wish," said Qui-Gon. He folded his arms and turned to Obi-Wan, standing a short ways away at the navigation terminal. "Inform the Senator's shuttle that we'll be joining the next wave of landers," he said. "And find Anakin. Tell him to stay on the __Republic__ until we've returned _."_

Obi-Wan nodded and left the bridge. Tremors rocked the __Republic__ as the Federation ships hammered at its shields. Qui-Gon glanced at Tagge. He could feel the man's anger and irritation as he barked orders over the fleetcom. The first transport group vanished back into hyperspace and appeared on the sensor map just over the planet's north pole. Qui-Gon watched the wedge-shaped __Acclamator__ _-_ class ships descend into the atmosphere, venting LAAT gunships from their combat bays. The Federation's vulture droids raced to intercept them, but the ships were too large and too heavily armored to be harried effectively by the smaller craft.

"I'm ready, Master Qui-Gon," said Padmé.

They met Obi-Wan at the shuttle.

"Anakin is on the bridge," the young man said to Qui-Gon. "He should be safe there."

Qui-Gon stood beside his apprentice as the Senator and pair of blue-robed guards boarded the shuttle. Steam hissed from its cooling sinks as the pilots fired the engines. "Obi-Wan," he said, "I know you haven't always shared my judgment, and that I have excluded you sometimes from my decisions. This has always been for your protection."

"I understand, Master," said Obi-Wan. He looked resigned.

Qui-Gon folded his arms, looking out at the clones in the bay. Flights of V-wings were leaving the deck, flashing in formation through the static screens that sealed oxygen in the docking area. He touched the Force, and then let it go. "That ends now."

Obi-Wan looked up and met his eyes. His expression had sharpened and Qui-Gon could feel his mind moving, processing. "What?"

"The Council agreed to let you face the trials just before we left Coruscant," said Qui-Gon. "Ideally, you would have stayed and attained elevation. In my selfishness, I convinced them to let you accompany me on one last mission, but I cannot treat you as my Padawan any longer."

"Master-"

"For some time, Obi-Wan," continued Qui-Gon, "I have been working outside the auspices of the Jedi Council. Anakin's training is a matter of the Force in its purest form, not of the Code or the Order. I have...foreseen that soon we will be torn apart, faced with grave trials and shaken to the core of our tenets. It may be that this is already upon us, that this war will be the end of the Order's heart if not its body. We have existed for a thousand generations, Obi-Wan. We have dedicated our lives to peace and learning, to the betterment of the Galaxy. And yet for all our knowledge, the Force, the binding principle of our Order's philosophy, remains elusive in its purposes.

"Millions of Jedi have given their lives over to searching for its meaning, and we have never been closer than we are now. Anakin may be our last hope for understanding." He felt the strength go out of him as he finished speaking, taken with the realization that he stood on a precipice. "I will train Anakin in the Force whether the Council allows it or not."

Obi-Wan was silent for a long moment. Qui-Gon could feel the conflict in him, the warring loyalties. They were close, even for Master and Padawan, but the Council's word was still law to the younger man. Obi-Wan was too strong, too loyal to let himself or his opinions be easily swayed, even by his Master. Qui-Gon was proud of the boy's integrity, but Anakin's training, his role in the galaxy's destiny, was too important to abandon over qualms.

The shuttle's engines had finished their warmup sequence. A clone appeared at the top of the boarding ramp, his white helmet under his arm. "She's ready to take us down, Master Jinn," he said in Fett's rough, uncultured voice. "At your order, sir."

Qui-Gon put one foot on the boarding ramp, looking back at Obi-Wan. "Whatever you decide," he said quietly, "it has been my great pleasure to teach you. You have been my finest student, Obi-Wan, and a better Jedi than I."

Obi-Wan nodded, blinking, and together they walked up the ramp.

The shuttle left the docking bay and slipped out into the shadow of the fleet, still tilted to shield the transports from the Federation armada. A hail of withering turbolaser fire kept the swarms of vulture droids at bay while patrols of V-wings picked off any survivors. Wreckage drifted, cooling, between the dueling fleets. Plumes of plasma bloomed from punctured hulls. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan joined the Senator in the cockpit as their shuttle moved toward an __Acclamator__ -class vessel spinning its engines up for a jump. The shuttle's clone pilot hailed it. "Transport __Victory__ , this is shuttle NH-94 requesting permission to land."

"Copy, 94. You're clear to dock."

Qui-Gon closed his eyes and let his mind expand, let his senses grow and sweep outward from the emptiness of being and into the untraceable currents of the Force. Clear water moved around him. He felt the tension of the fleet, the terror and righteous indignation of officers in both navies, of the pilots in the Republic armada's fragile V-wings. He sensed the minds of his fellow Jedi, preparing for a conflict they did not truly understand. He felt disorder and confusion on the planet below.

And he felt hate, hot and jagged and blazing with pain. The Sith was near.

The shuttle touched down on the deck of the __Victory__ _._ The ship jumped a moment later. Qui-Gon knew silence for an instant, and then the _Victory_ reappeared along with four others of its model bare miles from the atmosphere over Naboo's north pole. He opened his eyes.

"Here we are," said the Senator.

Qui-Gon stared out through the shuttle's viewscreen, across the crowded docking bay to the magnetic field where the fires of reentry licked at the hull of the __Victory__ _._ The air took on a bluish hue as the transport entered the atmosphere, trailed by a pursuing swarm of vulture droids. The transport banked, internal stabilizers groaning audibly, and Qui-Gon saw Naboo's polar ice cap growing rapidly in size below them. "Here we are," he agreed.

NUTE

Nute stood on a balcony overlooking Theed, his robes of office fluttering around him in the cool morning breeze. The sun was only half-risen and he had not yet donned his miter, had not yet become the Viceroy. He could see his fleet locked in battle with the Republic's in the planet's gravity well, their titanic struggle reduced by distance to lines of flickering light. Daulty Dofine's voice was hissing from his comlink, lying on a chair just inside his suite of rooms, but he did not answer the Captain. What would he say? __Hold firm, Daulty, surely Lord Sidious will aid us!__ Nute chuckled to himself. Poor Dofine would never know the game his Viceroy has played. None of them would know, not even faithful Rune.

Droids marched in winding columns through the streets as fat-bellied freighters and squat, insectile shuttles lifted off from landing pads and open squares. They were ferrying Naboo's citizenry to the safety of the riverlands. The Republic would devastate Theed retaking its walls, would pound the beautiful city into a wreck and capture it all on holocam for the whole Galaxy to see. And Nute Gunray would be the great pacifist, the innocent victim of unjust taxation who had put himself at a disadvantage to save the lives of Naboo's citizens. Sympathy for the industrialist seats, and a fresh upwelling of antipathy for the Jedi who led the assault.

Just as he had planned with Dooku and Sidious. The Sith were not fools, and neither was Nute Gunray. He rubbed his chin with a long-fingered hand, squinting at the sunrise.

"What are you doing out here?"

Rune. Nute turned. His adviser stood just inside his apartments, already robed in his customary black. "Captain Dofine is on the line," said Rune. "We are under attack."

"Yes," said Nute. "I know. You worry too much, Rune. You should relax. Take some spice, it's there on my table." He waved a damp hand at his bed.

Rune looked furious. "This was supposed to be a bluff," he hissed. "It was never meant to come to war! This will ruin us! We will lose _everything!"_

Nute crossed the room in three quick strides and seized the shorter Neimoidians by the front of his robes. "No," he said, lips peeling back from his fused teeth. "No. This is the _beginning_ , Rune! This is only the first step!" He pushed his adviser away and Rune stumbled on the hem of his vestments and tripped, sprawling on the floor. He turned back to the window. "We're going to have everything."

Rune scrambled back over the room's rich carpets, looking fearfully at Nute. He looked as though he thought Nute might shoot him. Nute wasn't sure he didn't mean to.

A low, echoing rumble broke the tension. Rune got to his feet and joined Nute at the balcony rail as Republic transports appeared on the horizon, their great wedge-shaped hulls slicing through the air. The grasslands below rippled from the downdraft of their engines and gunship landers poured from their bays. The last of the Neimoidian shuttles, saving Nute's own, left the city just as the first missiles streaked from the oncoming LAAT gunships to the droids manning Theed's towering walls. Lasers stabbed from mobile turret emplacements, slicing rockets and pinpointing their warheads. A few projectiles flickered through the wall of light and slammed into Theed's ancient mural-engraved perimeter, throwing droids and stonework dozens of meters into the air.

"We're doomed," said Rune, clutching at the rail with both hands. He bowed his head.

Nute said nothing. He had not smoked that morning, but his mind seemed strangely afloat. It was as though he had cast everything into the wind, had freed himself of his paranoia and his greed with one colossal throw of the dice. Events had outpaced him, too large and wild to be truly understood or feared. He rubbed his chin and watched the Republic land in the fields outside of Theed, watched their ships disgorge marching legions of white-armored simulacra.

He never noticed Maul's arrival. The Sith simply appeared at his side, dressed only in a loose black tunic, shirt, and trousers belted with a heavy sash. Explosions cut the air as the _Acclamator_ -class transports unloaded their heavy armor, AT-TE units and SPHAT artillery platforms marching like fat metal beetles on a dozen piston-driven legs. "Lord Maul," said Nute.

"Count Dooku sends his regards," said the Sith, staring at Gunray with his horrible yellow eyes, his tattooed face expressionless. "He and the other industrialists are meeting on Geonosis. He expects you to join him. Soon."

"Yes, yes," said Nute. "Thank you, Lord Maul."

Maul said nothing. At length he turned and walked away, the horns on his bald skull catching the light of war and sunrise for a moment. Nute turned to Rune. "I think we will not remain much longer," he said. "Go and prepare the shuttle."

Rune fled.

Nute did not turn back to the unfolding battle. He knew how it would end. He had, after all, helped to script it.

DOOKU

The Count's guests watched, horror-struck, as holonet footage of the Grand Army's departure from Coruscant played for the thousandth time that day. They sat and stood in his parlor, glasses of expensive alcohol forgotten in their hands. Dooku watched them from his place beside the window. Chairman San Hill, tall and grave-faced and already committed. Shu Mai, the frail and elderly Gossam, Presidente of the Commerce Guild. Foreman Wat Tambor of the Techno Union, speaking through his vocabulator to the beady-eyed Quarren, Tessek, who wriggled his mouth tentacles and burbled something in response. Argente, the scheming Koorivar. Senator Tarkin stood apart from the others, looking furious and disgusted. He scowled at Dooku.

The show of the Republic's might was serving its purpose. Dooku could smell the fear rolling off the wealthy and the powerful, could sense the nervousness in their swarm of aides and secretaries as the lesser sentients watched their superiors sweat. The Aqualish Senator, Po Nudo, was raging in his brute language, his inward-curving mouth tusks clicking together.

"This spectacle is revolting," said Tarkin as he moved to stand beside the Count. "Surely _they_ could be kept elsewhere?"

"Don't let your prejudices cloud your reason, Wilhuff," said Dooku sharply, glancing at the gaunt, greying man. "They are necessary to the plan we discussed, and you would do better to suffer in silence. Soon enough you'll have what you want."

Tarkin looked displeased.

"My friends," said Dooku, drawing the attention of the industrialists, the bankers, the accountants and merchants of the Galaxy. The holoscreen on the wall snapped off and the penthouse room's lights compensated, brightening. Dooku stepped away from Tarkin toward the center of the room. He clasped his hands behind his back. "I can add little to the travesty the Republic has made of its ideals. Even now Viceroy Gunray faces extermination as a penalty for his pursuit of his rightful self-interest. It is a crime that cannot be excused."

The room fell silent. All eyes were on Dooku, and he knew he had them. He kept his expression grave and opened himself to the tension and power flowing through the Force, let it suffuse him and color his voice. "The new Chancellor will not let this issue rest," he said. "Even now he discusses reforms in the Senate, the exclusion of the corporatist seats. I have seen enough of tyranny, my friends. I have heard enough of its voice in the halls of government, enough of its jackbooted tread on the parade ground, enough of its paranoid exhortations in the Senate Round!"

He punctuated his statement with a slash of his arm, letting cold fury radiate outward from his presence in the Force. "Valorum's taxes still stand," he said in the hollow silence. "We, the Galaxy's elite, will find no place in Palpatine's new order. That he craves power is plain. His creation of an army, his illegal punitive assault on the Trade Federation, these signs point to a man intent on carving out his private niche in history. There is no place for great men in the shadow of a tyrant. We will be swept aside, we will be done away with. We will be...removed."

"Palpatine would not dare," said Shu Mai, wringing her wrinkled blue hands so that her many bracelets and bangles clinked together. "The Galactic economy-"

"Would do better beneath his heel," said Dooku, cutting the female Gossam off with a furious stare. __All true, as it happens. But what lies are not spiced with something of their inner verity?__ "He wants centrality, control, a place for himself at the apex of this Galaxy.

"He will not hesitate to take it by force."

Dooku let his words hang in the air for a long moment, and then he moved toward the door where Asajj waited. At the threshold he turned back to his well-dressed guests, feeling their panic and nervous fear. "I will be adjourning to Geonosis," he said to them. "Archduke Poggle has generously offered to accommodate those of us who are...dissatisfied with the results of the election. I suggest you consider his generosity seriously."

He turned and swept out of the room, Asajj following at his heels. The babble of panicked conversation broke out behind him as the door slid shut.


	13. Lord of Pain

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: LORD OF PAIN

QUI-GON

Qui-Gon stepped off of the transport's broad starboard landing ramp and onto the muddy field. Ranks of clones marched ahead of him in perfect lockstep, keeping pace with the slow-moving AT-TE's. Other columns stretched from the other landing craft, all converging on the distant city where the fighting had already begun. Even from a mile away Qui-Gon could hear explosions and the cough of blaster fire. Turbolasers stabbed at the sky, raking the incoming waves of clone gunships. Qui-Gon watched the city walls. Smoke rose in oily columns, dark against the pale sky. The swift, warm wind blew through his hair.

"Master Plo Koon and Master Billaba have reached the city," said Obi-Wan as he joined Qui-Gon on the churned and trampled earth. "They're encountering heavy resistance." A pair of clone officers flanked the younger Jedi. The Senator made her way down the ramp after him, preceded by her Senate Guards in their sweeping blue robes and tall helms.

"We have a gunship standing by on reserve, sir," said one of the clones. "It's ready to take you wherever you need to be."

"Very good, commander," said Qui-Gon. He turned to Padmé. "Senator-"

Hatred, a sea of white-hot wrath. Yellow eyes narrowed to murderous slits, a flash of red and a triumphant shout as a woman's body flopped lifelessly to the ground and a smoking lightsaber rolled away from an outstretched hand. Qui-Gon staggered, his heart pounding. He rounded on the clone officer, spots of color bursting before his eyes. "Bring the gunship," he said, his voice hoarse.

The officer sprinted back onto the transport, shouting for a flight crew. Qui-Gon seized Obi-Wan's arm and the younger man pulled him up the ramp, the Senator shouting questions after them. "Who?" asked Obi-Wan.

"Master Billaba," gasped Qui-Gon through gritted teeth. They crested the top of the ramp and met the gunship as it coasted on repulsor jets, engines spinning up with a thrumming whine. Obi-Wan helped him aboard and the Senator leapt up after them, catching hold of one of the safety straps hanging from the ceiling. She looked pale, but composed.

"Quickly," said Qui-Gon. The Dark Side pulsed and roiled around him, slashing with ragged claws at his mind. He could feel the Sith moving through the city, could hear the thunder of his urge to kill. He felt a throat in his hand, the fluttering pulse of life. He closed his mind, shutting the pain and anguish away in a dark place. Straightening, he took hold of a safety strap as the wind pulled at his robes and brought tears to his eyes. The gunship was rising away from the transport, its powerful engines churning the air with a full-throated roar.

The city was burning, the sprawl of its residential districts growing fast as the airship thundered toward it. The columns below were moving at a brisk pace. Droid gunners and weapons emplacements on the crumbling walls of Theed raked the fields around the city as vulture droids swept past, pivoting like dancers to fire their cannons at the clone troops on the ground. Qui-Gon narrowed his senses, shutting out the hue and cry of the battle as his gunship closed on the city. "Leave the Senator with Master Windu at the gates," he shouted to the pilot. "Then take us in over the rooftops."

"Understood, sir," shouted the pilot from the gunship's open cockpit. They banked hard, dipping away from the worst of the dogfighting around the walls and toward the largest of the columns approaching the city's ruined gates. Mace Windu, Jedi Master and General of the Grand Army of the Republic, was standing atop a scorched and muddied AT-TE with a pair of armored clones at his sides. His ignited lightsaber burned violet in his hand as the gunship moved to hover alongside his mobile headquarters, shielded by the column's withering fire.

"Depa is dead," shouted Qui-Gon as Mace turned and met his eyes. "Obi-Wan and I will deal with the Sith. Keep the Senator safe."

Padmé jumped down from the gunship and onto the AT-TE's command deck, accepting Mace Windu's steadying hand on her shoulder. She looked back up at Qui-Gon as her guards leapt down after her. "Thank you, Master Qui-Gon," she said, her voice just audible over the pounding of the gunship's engines. "May the Force be with you."

"And you," said Qui-Gon. He saluted Mace as the gunship began to rise, angling upward.

"Be careful," shouted Mace, his expression stern and grave. "Plo and Adi are in the city! I'll send word ahead!"

The AT-TE and its passengers receded swiftly and Qui-Gon opened himself to the Force, let it flood him in all its raw, tumultuous magnitude. He felt the minds of the clones fighting far below, their dogged determination and unquestioning loyalty. Their thoughts marched in lockstep through the streets of Theed. Fear and tension radiated outward from the Palace on the city's highest tier, above the domes and turrets, minarets and cupolas. The Viceroy and his staff. Jedi moved with the clones, calm and collected behind their mental walls. The Sith loped alone down empty streets, poisoning the Force with his hate and vitriol. He left bodies in his wake.

And nothing else. Qui-Gon's eyes snapped open just as the gunship flashed between two ornate towers, scattering birds. "The city is empty," he said.

Obi-Wan looked confused. Their pilot shouted something, and then he choked on his words. Qui-Gon let go of his safety grip and spun toward the cockpit, his lightsaber snapping to life in his hands. The clone pilot was twitching, impaled through the gunship's viewscreen by a glowing red blade of energy. The Sith crouched on the gunship's prow, his black robes whipped around him by the wind. He stared at Qui-Gon, and then his saber flashed, slicing the viewscreen cleanly in two. He was inside the passenger bay in a rippling flash of black and red and a second ruby blade hissed to life from the other end of his lightsaber's hilt. Obi-Wan had drawn his own weapon. The Sith spun, saberstaff humming as sparks flew from the deck and ceiling of the cramped chamber. Qui-Gon parried one strike high, then a second low as Obi-Wan countered a jab at his arm with a vicious riposte.

The gunship spun through the air, alarms screaming in its cockpit. Qui-Gon let his feet move over the deck, let his arms flow through the air of their own accord. He twisted, parried, and struck. The Sith blocked his strike with brutal strength. His face was a twitching rictus, full of a terrible fury. He bared rotting yellow teeth. "Jedi," he snarled. They broke apart and circled one another in the confined space. Obi-Wan was sweating and grim, his saber held in a low guard.

The street, crowded with clones, rushed up to meet the gunship. Proximity alarms howls. Qui-Gon threw himself at the Sith, blade flashing. He beat the tattooed man back toward the cockpit with a hammering flurry of blows. His arms ached. "Obi-Wan!" he cried. "Jump!"

The Sith deactivated his saber's second blade and lunged at Qui-Gon. Qui-Gon turned the lunge and kicked the Sith in the stomach, knocking him onto his back. He brought his saber up, saw the picturesque street whirl past again, felt Obi-Wan's anguished indecision. "Go!" he shouted. His apprentice leapt free of the gunship. Qui-Gon brought his lightsaber down, but the Sith rolled and lashed out with his own weapon, face a twisted mask of cold rage.

Qui-Gon felt a cold heat stab through his stomach. He looked down, his arms falling to his sides. The Sith's lightsaber was buried halfway to the hilt in his stomach, glowing dully. Qui-Gon coughed and drew a deep wheezing breath, his knees folding as the Sith came to his feet and seized him by the arm. He dragged Qui-Gon to the gunship's open side and leapt, dragging the wounded Jedi out into the ripping wind.

They hit the street just as the gunship slammed into the side of a towering riverside mansion and exploded, showering the paving stones with chunks of masonry and twisted girders. Qui-Gon bounced and rolled, only half-aware of the searing pain in his gut. He came to rest a hundred yards from the crash site, warm blood pouring from his mouth. He heard soft footsteps coming toward him, heard the crackle and hiss of a lightsaber igniting. "I am Darth Maul, Jedi," said a low, grating voice. Qui-Gon stared up at the sky. It seemed so far away.

"This is my vengeance."

There was pain in his chest as the Sith's blade burned him, charring his flesh, but it was a distant thing. Qui-Gon drew a deep, involuntary breath. He felt the Force wash through him. He heard Obi-Wan's shout of rage and anguish, felt the younger man lose himself in a rushing wave of grief.

"Qui-Gon! NO!"

Qui-Gon's own emotions were moving away, becoming less important. Even the brilliant agony in his chest was of little concern. Maul's blade jerked up through flesh and sinew, bone and muscle. It found Qui-Gon's heart.

He was young again, blood pounding in his ears as he ran through a field. _Did I ever know my homeworld?_ The long grass whispered against his legs. A river ran and he ran toward it, stumbling down the bank through stands of fibrous sumac, nettles biting his bare feet. A covey of water fowl burst from the rushes by the murmuring bank. Their wings beat at the air.

Anakin stood in the water. He was older, a man grown, and his skin was burned, inflamed, his left arm a contrivance of cold steel. He turned to Qui-Gon. "This is the tipping point," he said. His eyes were carious and yellow, underscored by darkness.

The river rose up.

And there was only the Force.

ANAKIN

Anakin stood on the bridge of the __Republic__ , watching as Admiral Tagge commanded an increasingly desperate offensive against the Federation fleet. The enemy ships had formed a sort of arc and were hammering the Republic ships from above, below, and in front. Lasers stabbed the cold void, vaporizing durasteel and pounding deflector shields. Staring out through the viewscreen at the chaos of fighter duels and weapons discharge, Anakin could hardly bring himself to focus on the danger he was in. It was just too magnificent, too right.

This, here and now, was where he belonged.

"It's no good, Admiral," said one of the captains through the fleet comlink relay. "We're taking heavy fire and the enemy formation keeps shifting, they're cycling their shields!"

Tagge was furious. "Target them one at a time!" he bellowed at the man. "Get your batteries on target twelve, man!"

Anakin glanced at the tactical table, mapping the locations and dispositions of the two fleets in his mind. The Federation __lucrehulk__ _-_ classes were like a swarm of insects, keeping close together and tilted toward the Republic fleet to make the best use of their concentrated dorsal batteries as they encircled the smaller armada. Tagge was still shouting for the captains to focus their fire, but the __Resolve__ was dead in space, sinking into Naboo's gravity well, and the __Ameliorator__ had been gutted from both sides by vicious broadsides. Anakin saw debris and white-armored forms floating through space, vented from gaping rents in the hulls of half a dozen Star Destroyers. He could almost feel the lives winking out, one by one, in the dark and the cold.

The bridge was a storm of shouting officers clutching fistfuls of damage report dossiers and fighting to make themselves heard over one another as they crowded close to Tagge. Anakin was buffeted by the mob, thrust close to identical square faces with identical heads of cropped dark hair. It was like seeing an echo, and he felt nauseous. Tagge shouted for silence but he went unheard. On the tactical map the __Pride of the Senate__ was listing badly as the gravity well pulled her down. Vulture droids swarmed the dying ship like flies on a corpse.

Anakin blinked. He felt nauseous, as though he were seeing too much. The bridge was too loud, too crowded. He put his hands to his head and gritted his teeth, and then he saw it. There was a way to win, a confluence of events converging on the Federation fleet in flames and venting ruin. He clutched the nearest clone for support and the man turned, grabbed his arms and dragged him up from the deck as he sagged. "Alright, son?" shouted the clone.

Anakin stood, pushed the clone away and began to force his way toward the Admiral. He slipped between uniformed sentients, ducking under a willowy Kaminoan engineer's elbow and sliding between a pair of Cerean lieutenants to the tactical table where Tagge was staring down at the wreck of the __Pride__ , his face lit from below by the holographic displays. The Federation fleet was closing on the dead ship, moving out of its arc formation to clean up the rest of the Republic's ships.

"Tell her captain to jump!" shouted Anakin at Tagge. "Tell them to jump now!"

Tagge looked up, his face red with fury. "Get this boy off the bridge," he blustered. "This is a battleship, not a damned play-yard."

A pair of armored clones seized Anakin's arms. He struggled, planting his feet. Something like bile welled up in his throat, dark and strong and hot. He saw Tagge's eyes widen, saw the man's hand rise to pull at his stiff collar. The bridge officers were silent, staring. Afraid.

Anakin's eyes ached, he twisted his shoulders and the clones fell away, one clutching at his throat and making a terrible rattling sound. He could feel Tagge's mind, could sense the older man's outrage and fear. "Tell them to JUMP!" shouted Anakin. His voice echoed through the bridge, raw and commanding. He frightened himself.

"Captain Kett," croaked Tagge, his voice hoarse in the silence. "Jump."

"Admiral," came the crackling reply. "She'll come apart!"

"JUMP!" thundered Tagge.

Anakin looked out the viewscreen, breathing hard as his pulse thundered in his veins. His fists were clenched at his sides. He heard one of the clones choking, heard armored knees strike the deck as the soldier collapsed, clutching at his helmet. He felt as though he would never be able to unclench his hands, as though his fingers would break through his palms. The burning __Pride of the Senate__ hung suspended between the oncoming __lucrehulk__ cruisers, flanks coming apart under heavy broadside fire. __Now__ , thought Anakin.

The ship jumped, or tried to. The explosion destroyed the two Federation cruisers outright and sent one of the wrecks careering into a third. The two ships embraced and died. Anakin let out a long, slow breath as the wreckage of the _Pride_ slammed into the ships around it. The ship's arrow-shaped prow sailed off, away from Naboo, propelled by its ill-fated jump. The clone at Anakin's side drew a deep, ragged breath and got to his feet, backing away. Tagge and his staff were staring out the viewscreen at the carnage of the __Pride__ stretched out over a hundred miles of cold void.

"Move in," said Tagge at last, not looking at his men. "Mop them up."

Anakin slumped into the nearest bridge seat. He put his head in his hands, the strength bleeding from his muscles. He felt cold.

MAUL

Darth Maul stared across the road at the young Jedi, Kenobi. Qui-Gon's body lay at his feet, smoke rising from the jagged slash across his chest and the hole in his stomach. Maul ignited his saber's second blade and bared his teeth at Kenobi, daring the younger man to attack him. The Dark Side sang in his veins, pounded behind his eyes, and burned in his throat. Kenobi was young and furious and afraid, standing in the shadow of a burning villa as vulture droids and gunships traded blaster fire overhead. Shadows flitted across the wreckage-strewn paving stones. The crashed gunship was burning nearby, letting off clouds of noxious smoke.

Kenobi cleared the street in a single leap and brought his lightsaber down at Maul's shoulder with a brutal, artless overhand chop. Maul twisted away and spun his saberstaff, parrying Kenobi's backhand slash. The young Jedi came on in a furious whirl of blue light, his face twisted with grief and rage. He screamed without words.

Maul laughed, high and wild. He sidestepped a lightning-swift lunge and hacked at Kenobi, but the Jedi managed to bring his lightsaber around in time. Maul flung out a hand, calling on the Force, and Kenobi flew back and slammed into the wall of a scorched and crumbling riverside tower. Maul bounded after him, saber slashing air, but Kenobi rolled aside and came to his feet with a shout of rage. He flung himself at Maul again, chopping and hacking with all the finesse of a lunatic.

Maul parried blow after blow. He deactivated the saberstaff's second blade and battered the Jedi's weapon aside. Kenobi parried his thrust, falling back. Tears streamed down his blunt, smoke-darkened face. Maul ducked under a wild swing, snarling, and then Kenobi caught him in the force and Maul felt his feet leave the ground. His anger burned white-hot and he struggled, writhing. The Jedi stared up at him, one hand raised and clenched into a fist. "You're scum," he said in a hard, flat voice. The hate in him was gone, the anger walled away behind towering bulwarks of discipline.

Darth Maul flew back, propelled by a wave of staggering kinetic energy. He struck hard stone and fell to the ground, the breath driven from his lungs. Kenobi was on him before he gained his feet, saber slashing and hacking. Maul blocked, parried, and felt the side of his face dissolve into agony as Kenobi's lightsaber flashed too close to his skin. The pain was molten. His skin bubbled and crisped, peeling back from muscle. He threw himself aside and rolled to his feet, fighting the urge to scream. Kenobi's saber drew a line of hot agony across his belly. Maul doubled over, his cheek tearing as he howled in pain. Kenobi's boot thudded into his side and he went down, clawing at the paving stones as his lightsaber rolled away.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't how it had been meant to end. "NO!" he screamed, and with a last desperate surge of strength he bounded for his saber and caught it in midair with the Force. He spun, twisting before he hit the ground, and sprang straight for the side of the nearest tower. He caught a windowsill and vaulted higher, rushing up and away. Gunray would be fleeing soon, taking his shuttle from the Palace, and Maul had already dispatched two Jedi. That would be enough for his Master, surely. He paused on the tower's crumbling dome, staring back down at Obi-Wan Kenobi's implacable expression, and then he gathered his hatred and fled.

The city rushed past as Maul bounded from rooftop to rooftop, his body screaming in protest at each fresh exertion. The fighting around him was fierce, but one lone figure drew little attention. He bulled through windows, crashed through empty drawing rooms and scaled ivy-choked walls until, panting and disheveled, blood streaming down his neck, he reached the Palace. The droids still held the causeway to the gates and Maul forced his way through them, cutting down everything in his way. The Palace loomed ahead, its domes and turrets rising high above the rest of the burning and war-torn city.

Darth Maul burst into the column-lined entrance hall and staggered onward, his breath ragged in his chest. The wound across his stomach burned like fire and his face was a mask of numb pain. The left side of his jaw hung loose, the muscles twisted unnaturally. He took a turbolift up to the Royal Dock, a single circular landing platform where the Viceroy's shuttle hunched like a fat brown beetle on its insectile landing legs. The engines were warm, the preflight sequence complete. Maul murdered the Neimoidian pilot, flung the corpse over the edge of the dock, and finally dragged himself up the shuttle's landing ramp and into the cockpit. Haako was cowering behind the co-pilot's seat, pressed to the wall. Maul stared at the Neimoidian for a long, horrible moment.

"Don't move a muscle," he snarled at last, his voice hoarse and slurred. The Neimoidian swallowed and said nothing. Darth Maul sank into the pilot's seat and took the control yoke in his gloved hands, seething.

The shuttle rose from the Royal Dock and through the web of chaotic warfare around Theed. Soon the city was nothing but a bloody memory. One thought beat like a pulse behind Maul's eyes, driving his hands as he forced himself to enter the coordinates for Geonosis into the ship's navicomputer. Outside the viewscreen the Republic Star Destroyers were making mincemeat of the Federation armada. __Kill Kenobi. Kill Kenobi.__

__Kill Kenobi._ _

"I warned him," said Haako sadly. He sank into the co-pilot's seat, head bowed.

They jumped, leaving the wreckage of the Trade Federation fleet in orbit over Naboo.


	14. The Pyre

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE PYRE

PADME

Padmé stepped over the threshold of the Palace's galleried entryway and into the yawning throne room. Mace Windu was with her, along with a cadre of clones and a detachment of impassive Senate Guards. The throne room was empty, its defenders fled. Padmé folded her arms as a brisk wind swept in through the shattered window behind the vacant throne where Amidala had died in smoking pieces. Clones poured by to her either side, sweeping the room with their blaster rifles as they advanced at a measured, cautious pace.

"Gunray emptied the city before we landed," said Master Windu as he walked beside Padmé down the long, arcaded hall toward the throne. "Why, I can't say, but Theed's citizens are safe. There's no sign of the Viceroy." He looked disturbed and angry, his smooth face lined with worry. "I don't like it, Senator."

"No," said Padmé. "It isn't right."

"General Windu!"

A clone had appeared at one of the many arched doorway leading off of the throne room. He had his helmet under his arm and his short, dark hair was disheveled and sweaty. "We've found Viceroy Gunray," he said.

Padmé clutched at her arms, fingernails digging into her skin.

"Take us to him," said Mace, his frown darkening.

Nute Gunray was standing at the edge of the Royal Dock, his elaborate robes billowing around him in the wind as at his back the empty husk of the city burned. He shrank back as Padmé and Mace emerged from the stairwell, his fingers tightening on the blaster pistol he held. Four clones stood opposite him on the landing platform, rifles leveled at his chest. "Senator Naberrie," said Gunray, smiling weakly. "And Master Windu. What a pleasure. What an honor. Your citizens are quite safe, I assure you. Our invasion was an economic measure, not one of conquest." His hands were shaking and there was sweat on his oily green skin. He had lost his tall miter. His bald scalp gleamed.

"You're under arrest, Viceroy," said Mace, striding past Padmé. "Drop your weapon."

"No, Jedi," said Nute, his voice suddenly bitter and waspish. "No. You still don't see it, do you? How we've already beaten you. Your Order, your authority, everything is over now."

"I said stand down," said Master Windu.

"Who is the villain here, Master Jedi?" hissed Gunray, inching backward toward the platform's edge. "Who burned the most beautiful city in the sector? Who lead the Republic into illegal war? The Senate will splinter, the Galaxy will bleed...and it will be remembered as your callous fault. You have fallen into a trap from which there is no escaping." He pointed at Mace, a smile curving his lipless mouth. "My own plans may not have ended precisely as I intended, but..." he glanced skyward and then gave a philosophical shrug, "I have no intention of facing arrest."

And before Mace could so much as move, Nute Gunray took a step back, robes flaring in the wind, and dropped out of view. Padmé stared at the empty air the Viceroy had occupied a moment ago, shocked and horrified. A dull crunch reached her ears a moment later and she turned away, choking back bile. The platform was silent. Mace Windu walked to its lip, accompanied by a pair of clones, looked down and then turned back to Padmé. "He's dead," he said, his voice flat.

Padmé didn't need to look. She had seen enough death and destruction, enough of her burning city and the clones who had died in its pointless retaking. Theed's citizens would return to a wasteland of rubble, a wonder of Naboo pounded to slag by the weapons of the Republic's new Grand Army. They would return to a city where clones marched in white-armored columns down ruined streets, where buildings were still burning, where bombs had cratered homes and gardens. The Senator felt like crying. She clung to her composure with an effort of will.

Plo Koon arrived just as Padmé and Mace returned to the throne room. The Kel-Dor's robes were singed and tattered and his left arm was bound tightly across his chest with bacta-soaked bandages. He walked as though he had aged a hundred years. Mace paused, reading something in the masked face that Padmé couldn't see. She glanced at Windu, panic welling up inside her. _What could have gone wrong? What more could have happened?_

"Qui-Gon is dead," said Plo, his voice harsh with grief. "Padawan Kenobi is with him."

Padmé stood silent for a long moment as Mace stared at the floor, tears glistening at the corners of his eyes. And then she began to cry, hollow sobs that sent sharp pangs through her chest and shook her shoulders. __No. I...no.__ Mace Windu put his arm around her. Padmé pressed herself against the front of the Jedi's robes, shameless and distraught.

"He's with the Force," Windu said quietly. "It's what he wanted. Let him go.

"Let him go."

OBI-WAN

They burned Qui-Gon after sunset on a balcony of the Palace left intact during the battle. There was not enough of Depa left to place her with him. In the distance, Obi-Wan could see the four grounded cruisers that were all that remained of the Federation's blockade fleet. A Star Destroyer hung low above the city, throwing it into deep shadow. Qui-Gon lay on a bier of oil-soaked wood, composed and calm-looking in a white funeral robe that hid the ruin of his chest and stomach. Senator Naberrie stood at the head of the bier in a mourning dress, her hair flowing down her back except where it was braided in a sort of circlet. Her arms were crossed, her eyes red-rimmed but dry.

The Council, less the slain Master Depa Billaba, stood at the margins of the balcony in stately silence. The Chancellor and several Senators, men and women of a dozen races Qui-Gon had known in life, stood with them. Anakin was at Palpatine's side, pale and tired-looking. Palpatine's hand rested on the younger man's shoulder. Obi-Wan could not look at the boy.

"To the Force, Master Qui-Gon has returned," said Yoda from where he sat cross-legged on the bench that ran the circumference of the balcony. "Honor him not with or tears, do we. Uphold we must the things Qui-Gon loved if his memory we would cherish. Treasure we must the causes he gave his life to." Yoda lowered his old head and clasped his clawed hands together.

"Remember Qui-Gon, we do."

"I remember Qui-Gon," said Master Windu. "He was my friend."

"I remember Qui-Gon," said Plo Koon. "He gave me wise counsel."

"I remember Qui-Gon," said Ki-Adi. "He knew the Force, and its will."

Obi-Wan knew it was his turn to speak. The Council's eyes were turned to him. The Senator was crying silently, tears curving down her painted cheeks. Obi-Wan swallowed. "I remember Qui-Gon," he said quietly. "He was my Master."

The tears came then as Master Windu passed him the torch to light the bier. Obi-Wan blinked them back and lit the fire, watched as its orange tongues licked at Qui-Gon's robes and hair. Smoke rose into the darkening sky, obscuring the sun's last light.

"I remember Qui-Gon."

The voice was deep and had orator's practiced timbre, but it was edged with sorrow. Obi-Wan turned, felt the others turn with him, and saw an old man dressed in black standing at the foot of Qui-Gon's funeral pyre. He was distinguished and handsome, his white-silver hair neatly combed, his beard trimmed close to his long, aristocratic face. Count Dooku put a hand on the stone of the bier, heedless of the flames licking around his fingers. "He was my student, and a son to me."

The Council was silent. Dooku stayed for a long while, gazing into the flames as Qui-Gon burned, and then he turned and left the balcony. One by one the others left, the Senator and Anakin last but for the Council and Obi-Wan. Palpatine too remained, looking troubled.

"A Jedi Knight you are," said Yoda. The flames threw long shadows over him, shadows that danced and flickered. He stood and stepped down from the bench, moving easily despite his age. There was a long silence as the ancient Master stared up at Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan could feel the incredible power, vigor, and vitality of the diminutive being. Yoda looked down at the floor at last. "Qui-Gon's last request, as you conveyed it, the Council grants.

"Your apprentice Skywalker shall be."

PALPATINE

It had gone beautifully, like the opening movement of a flawless composition. Better, even, than Palpatine had expected. Circumstance had favored him, he had to admit as he sat beside Anakin Skywalker on a bench in the Palace Gardens. His Senate Guards were close by, silent and dutiful in their long blue robes and crested helms. He wondered idly if he should have their uniform changed, perhaps a new color to remove their association with the Senate... But no. Now was a time to keep his mind firmly in the present, rooted in events as they unfolded.

"Anakin," he said, putting a hand on the younger man's arm. "We cannot save every person we love. We cannot control the fate of this Galaxy, only our own small place in it. You must learn to let go of Qui-Gon, to honor his memory with your strength and determination. You will be trained as a Jedi, just as he wished. He would be pleased." __Incredible that he survived, that his mother lived to raise him. My Master would have been overjoyed to see his experiment in the flesh, and in the process of realizing his potential...__

"The Council made a mistake," said Anakin in a dull, quiet voice. He turned to Palpatine with haunted eyes. "I was on the _Republic_ during the battle. The fleet was in trouble. Losing ships. I...I thought of a way to turn it around. Jump a damaged ship's hyperdrive, detonate it as it entered Hyperspace. The Admiral wouldn't listen to me.

"I made him listen."

Palpatine was silent for a long moment. His mind whirled, processing new information. _Such raw power. Such potential, and still untrained._ "Anakin," he said. "You knew what had to be done, and you had the power to see it carried out. Your methods, perhaps, were...ungentle, but without you the fleet would have been destroyed, Naboo ground beneath the Federation's heel." He rose, hands clasped behind his back, and paced to the low marble wall beside the river that ran through the gardens. "The Jedi Council may not share our sentiments," he said, turning back to Anakin. "But we know, Anakin, the cost of power and authority. Doing what one knows one must can be a heavy burden. Someone, however, must shoulder it, or the Galaxy pays a harsh price."

Anakin joined him at the wall, staring down into the river's turbulent depths. He looked troubled, but life had returned to his eyes. "How...how can I tell Obi-Wan?" he asked, his voice cracking weakly. "They'll never train me."

"It's really quite simple, Anakin," said Palpatine. "You must conceal it. You know the error of your ways, but the Council sees no room for learning, for trials of the self. You have a great future ahead of you. Your training is of paramount importance, and nothing can be allowed to obstruct it. Deception, Anakin, is not always evil. I will see that Admiral Tagge does not spread rumors."

Palpatine smiled, an aging parent advising a young and troubled son. __Closer to the truth than he might guess. I wonder how much his mind remembers, in dreams and half-waking. A house in the swamp, my Master's little kingdom in the backwater of a backwater. Perhaps Naboo's best-hidden secret.__ _ _Do you dream of the night we made you?__

"I understand," said Anakin. He looked at Palpatine. "Thank you, Chancellor."

Palpatine clapped the young man on the back. "In time your hurt will fade," he said. __In time, you will forget you ever felt it.__ "If you ever need a friendly ear, Anakin, or a word of advice some, I flatter myself, might consider wise, I am at your disposal. For my part I will be watching your career with great interest." He gripped the boy's shoulder, shook it, and departed. He looked back when he reached the Palace. Skywalker still stood at the carved stone railing, gazing into the river.

Dooku stepped from the shadows of the Garden Door, his expression dark. Palpatine dismissed his guards with a flick of his wrist. He and the Count walked together, away from Skywalker and the river, into the lanes between flowering shrubs and trees bearded with moss.

"His death was needless," said Dooku after they had gone a ways from the Palace. "He would have joined us, given the opportunity."

"I foresaw nothing of the sort," said Palpatine. "He was dangerously intelligent, my friend. Lord Maul's actions may have been rash, but the deed is done and we must proceed with our plans. You should be on Geonosis, I believe."

"Our guests can wait," said Dooku.

"Our designs cannot," retorted Palpatine, irritation pricking at his temper. "You must put your feelings on this matter aside, Count, or settle them with Lord Maul. His usefulness, in any event, will soon reach its extremity." _ _Perhaps a last test, for a more worthy apprentice...__

"I will have no part in your backstabbing," said Dooku derisively. "Kill him yourself, if he no longer pleases you."

"This discussion is at an end," said Palpatine. "Contact me through the channels we agreed upon, or not at all. We cannot risk discovery. Not yet."

Dooku was silent. He turned, his profile lit by the rising moon as he examined a purple flower at the end of a long, sinuous stalk. At length, he spoke. "Yes, my Master. Forgive my insolence. Qui-Gon was an extraordinary apprentice, and a great man."

"We all make sacrifices, my friend," said Palpatine. He folded his arms and took a deep breath of the rich, wet night air. "It is...necessary."

Dooku departed. Palpatine watched him go. __Do I need to kill him? He has his weaknesses. Idealistic, sentimental...but such an orator, and so inspiring. The industrialists might fragment without him. Best...to watch and see.__

It was always best to wait. Best to plot, to pull strings in the half-dark. All the permutations were accounted for, every eventuality known and understood. Palpatine glanced at the flower Dooku had admired. He let the Dark Side flood him for a single moment, let himself stand in its dark and thundering waters. And then he closed it away, shut off its psychotic roar.

There was calm. Petals floating on the still, warm air.

 _ _Everything__ , he thought to himself as he plucked the flower from its stem, __is proceeding exactly as I have foreseen it.__


End file.
